The Indirect Life
by Bladelover
Summary: First, he was Ambrose. Eventually, he became Glitch. In between, he was simply lost.
1. Chapter 1 Forgotten

_Yep, this is me, writing for a new fandom. Didn't see that coming._

_This is going to be a multi-chapter work, but I'm not sure just how many installments there will be as yet. At least four, I think. _

_Thanks to Madigirl and AmazonKitten for their beta efforts. AGraphicDesign is also betareading, but I got impatient and posted before hearing back from her. Of course, should she find any errors, I will correct them forthwith._

_Needless to say, I don't own the canon characters. Don't be spreading that lie._

* * *

Terror. That's what this feeling was called. 

He didn't know how he knew that, just as he didn't know how he knew _anything_, or why he _didn_'_t_ know so many other things. His own name, for example. It was odd, not knowing that – wasn't it? Yes, it was. People knew their names. They just did.

All around him was a room he didn't know, filled with objects that he often did recognize but, frighteningly, couldn't seem to name. He felt a need to explore, as though by roaming the room and touching some of these things his memory could be jogged, but when he thought to try it, he found he couldn't move. His arms and legs and head were pressed firmly down against a hard, cold table by thick straps._That_ was terrifying, because is anyone ever harshly confined for a pleasant reason? He didn't know for sure, but he really didn't think so.

Shivering, he realized it was cold in the room. Chilly air callously caressed him quite literally everywhere. _Naked?_ he thought. He wondered why he was like that. Naked and trussed to a hard, cold table couldn't be a good thing.

"Can you tell me your name?" a bald man was demanding to know, looming over him and partly backlit by the bright overhead light. His smile was as cold as the air in the room, as hard as the unforgiving surface beneath his bare skin.

Several emotional responses kicked in all at once. Panic: was he_ expected_ to know this? Was he failing some sort of test by not knowing his name? Frustration, too – couldn't this fellow see how distressed he felt? Whatever happened to a simple, "How do you feel?" or a kindly pat on the shoulder to reassure a frightened… patient? Which led to the obvious question: why was he strapped to this table? What was wrong with him? Had he been in an accident?

And finally, most distressing of all, he had the distinct feeling that the man with the cold smile expected him _not_ to recall his own name. And that he would be very glad to find this expectation confirmed.

He wanted to do well. He wanted to make this man happy. If he did, then he could ask to be unstrapped, and for some clothes. "It… I'm… I..." His own voice was both familiar and foreign, and he was momentarily confused by the paradox. Shouldn't it be either one or the other?

"Your _name_," the man repeated urgently, losing the smile._No, no, no!_ He was upsetting the man! That would never do, he was sure of it.

Alarmed, he ransacked his mind for any trace of identity. There must be something, some humble crumb left somewhere. "No," he said, panting with the effort. "I… don't know it. I'm sorry. Can you tell me what it is? I… I promise not to forget again."

The man's smile slowly returned, and he wondered why he'd ever considered it something to look forward to. Watching this cruel face crinkle, its lips sliding apart to expose huge teeth was like feeling a snake coil round one's neck and wondering whether it will strangle or bite. He wanted to shrink back from him, but again – table. Straps.

Terror.

"Never mind that," the man purred. "Your name's far less important than your function. Tell me about your work. What is your position? What do you do? For whom do you work?"

He felt his eyes open more widely. What sort of questions were these? If he couldn't remember his name, what chance did he have of remembering more complex information about his life and work? And why were these answers needed just now?

"I… don't know. Can't… Can't you just ask my…" He faltered. Who? "My next of kin?"

The man looked surprised, then let loose a brittle laugh that bounced sharply, painfully off the gray stone walls. "It's of no consequence. I think I have my answers." He continued to chuckle, writing something down on a pad.

A tentative hope arose. The man seemed pleased with him. Timidly smiling, he shifted slightly under the straps and prepared to ask, very meekly, for release. But the man looked past him, speaking to a point somewhere behind his head and above it. "Good enough. Close him up."

"Don't you want to quiz him some more?" His startled jerk at the new voice was abbreviated painfully by the tight hold of the straps.

The bald man's eyes narrowed. The room seemed to get even colder. "Why would I need to do that?"

"I dunno," said the other voice. The new person leaned into his line of sight briefly, and he saw it was a woman, middle-aged with graying red hair. He could hear objects being moved about, their metallic clinking striking an unreasoning fear in him. Probably that was just because he couldn't see them. "We've seen 'em sometimes regain some access after long interrogations. Seems a bit early to consider the job done."

But the bald man dismissed this concern with a wave of the hand and a sneer. "It doesn't matter whether he regains access or not, Elga. Once we're certain the brain is working properly, the rest can be disposed of."

"Then why even ask what he remembers?" demanded the woman.

"Because I found it amusing," the man snapped. It was scary, the angry look in his eyes. "And you have no business questioning my methods or actions. Now. Close. Him. Up." He turned abruptly and stalked away without another glance at the… patient? Prisoner? Just what was he?

He started with a cry of fear as unseen hands touched his head. "What… what are you doing? What's happening?"

"Sewing you up, dearie," the woman said in bored voice. "Hold still and it'll hurt less."

Sewing him up? So, he was _open_? Surgery! That's what he'd had.

"Was the operation…" What did he need to ask? Think! "Successful?"

A slight snort from his companion. "Oh yeah. You passed with flying colors."

He frowned. Surely "passing with flying colors" wasn't an appropriate expression when referring to brain surgery. Brain surgery! Yes, that's it! No wonder he couldn't remember things.

"How long will I be like this?"

The hands on his head stilled. _Oh no._ He'd caused offense somehow. Maybe he was being too demanding? "Please, I'm… I don't mean to push. I realize I can't expect to recover immediately. But how long will it be before I start to remember—"

"You won't," she said flatly. At his look of utter panic, she patted his bare shoulder briskly with cold fingers. "There now, it won't be as bad as you think."

Never remembering? Ever? How could that _not_ be as bad as he thought? "What… you mean I'll be like this forever?"

She was fitting something to the top of his head, positioning and repositioning it. "Nothing lasts forever, dearie," she said absently. He wondered which of them was confused as to the gravity of his situation.

_Questions, ask more questions._ He thought very hard. He really needed to figure out exactly what was… "Ow!"

"Well, I did tell you to hold still, didn't I?" the woman said irritably. "Stitchin' up a head isn't easy under the best of circumstances, and believe me, you'll want this to go on straight."

"Stop. It hurts!" he whimpered, gasping as he again felt a needle pierce his scalp. With efficient, merciless motion, the woman drew the stitch tight. "Oh, please, _please_ stop it! Stop!"

"Quit your thrashing, dimwit!"

He heard the anger in her voice and knew he should heed her words, but all self-control – however much he'd ever had – was thoroughly exhausted now. He'd awakened with no life and no name and no knowledge and plenty of awareness of lacking all of that. He'd been kept naked and cold and restrained and treated like… like some kind of laboratory animal, studied and prodded and questioned and given no answers, no respect, and no comfort. Whoever he was, he deserved better than that, didn't he? Didn't _anyone_?

The terror that had plagued him since he'd first awakened had now assumed full command of his mind. It forced out any capacity for rational thought and overflowed into fruitless physical resistance. He tugged ferociously at the unyielding straps that kept his limbs pressed to the table, noticing the stinging soreness in the places where the straps met his skin. Was this not the first time he'd struggled violently against them? The thought led to fresh panic as he wondered just how much he had forgotten.

The woman was yelling at him, but he'd passed the point of caring whether he angered her. Rage was, in fact, taking root inside of him as his fear and pain were joined by a sense of outrage against the injustice of their treatment of him. Dozens of different thoughts competed for prominence in his head, warring with one another, canceling each other out. _What have you done to me? What right have you to do it? Whatever I've done, I deserve better than this. Even a prisoner has a right to basic human dignity… to his identity… to a continued sense of self…_

But all of this was distilled by his diluted brain into the same endlessly repeated sentiment: "No, please! Stop! It_ hurts! Please!_" He couldn't even really remember what it was that hurt. He knew only that he wanted it to stop.

A new sensation flooded his body, a feeling of intense vibration that seemed to erupt in his bones and spread directly to all his nerve endings. His body arched against the straps as he tried to gasp and found he couldn't, and so there was no new exclamation. If there was any mercy in this situation, it was that the pain was short-lived, and he went limp with relief as he drew in shaky, rasping breaths.

"There, now," said a voice matter-of-factly. To one side, a long stick-like device was lain aside as unseen hands repositioned his head. He thought maybe he'd heard this voice before, but wasn't sure. He tried to roll his head to get a look at the person – a woman, he thought – but found that a strap against his forehead prevented it. There were straps all over him, pinning him to a hard, cold table. His wrists and ankles, particularly, felt sore and slick under the restraints, and he was out of breath. Perhaps he'd had some sort of seizure.

"Now see that you hold still and I won't have to do that again," admonished the female voice. He detected some irritation in the reprimand but no real malice. She clearly had authority over him, with license to punish as needed.

"Are you my mother?" he asked.

Laughter, more grating than musical but still pleasant to hear, briefly filled the room. "No, dearie. I'm just sewin' you up. Keep still, now."

Sewing him up… surgery. Something about surgery was familiar. "Then you're a doctor?"

There was a small sigh, and he understood he was irritating her. He had a feeling that was not a smart thing to do.

"Meant to be a doctor," she murmured. "No opportunities for the likes of me, though." He felt a strange sensation on the top of his head – a sharp touch, strangely distant, and a then a pulling sensation. He'd never felt anything like it. Well, as far as he knew, anyway. "How's that, dearie? Better? I applied a little wizard's tears to numb you up."

He had no idea what that meant, but it felt like gratitude was called for. "Thank you." Confusion tumbled through his mind like pickles in a barrel rolling downhill. "So… you're not a doctor, but… you're 'sewing me up.'"

She snorted. "Oh well, yes, the state can always find a use for the peasant with ambition, can't it? 'Doctor? Out of the question, but you can be a doctor's lowly _assistant_ . Surgeon? Don't be daft, woman! But here, you can sew up scalps for the Division of Criminal Extractions. That's a bit like surgery, after all, and better than your kind can usually expect.'"

Nothing she was saying made sense to him. "Division of…" What was the rest?

"Criminal Extractions," she finished briskly. The sharp-touching and pulling was proceeding quickly now; she'd started near his crown and was getting close to his forehead. "I admit, it was fascinating for a good long while. Even most doctors never get the chance to look at a living human brain, much less help to remove part of one. Still, after a few years, everything loses its novelty, doesn't it, dearie?"

Being for all intents and purposes mentally newborn, he had no way to judge the truth of her statement. "I… suppose so." His brow furrowed as he struggled to hang onto something else she'd said that had caught his interest. "Did you… did you say something about removing brains?"

She seemed very busy with knotting the thread as she finished her stitching. There was a sustained tug at his hairline, and he could see one of her hands hold the thread taut as she used a small pair of scissors to trim it close to his skin.

"There," she said. He thought she sounded like someone very tired trying to make people believe she's not. There was slight pressure at successive points of the top of his head as she ran her fingers along her handiwork. "Yes, nice and straight if I do say so myself. Now to the other side, and we'll be all finished here."

"Oh, good," he breathed, even though he didn't have a clue what would happen next. He knew only that he was very tired of whatever it was that was happening right now. He felt her positioning something on his head next to the stitches she'd just put in. "Hey, are you… are you sewing something onto my head?"

"Yes," she said impatiently. It sounded as though he'd asked her that many times. Maybe he had? "I'm installing your zipper, dearie."

He pondered that for a while, turning the words over and over in his mind and inspecting them from all possible angles. Nope, no matter how he looked at them, they just didn't make sense. Without meaning to, he laughed.

"Something funny?" She had that absent sound again, like she was just making conversation out of boredom.

Shyly, he said, "Sorry, I'm just really confused. Nothing's making sense. I thought you said," he interrupted himself with another giggle, "that you were installing 'my zipper.'"

"Yes? What's funny about that?" The woman's stitching never faltered.

He frowned. "Well, it's just silly, is all. People don't wear zippers on their heads. When's the last time you saw someone with one? What would be the reason for it? It doesn't make s—"

Shockingly, she slid around to the side of his table and took his chin roughly in her hand. Her eyes were full of anger, so much anger that he had a feeling most of it had already been there like explosive charges and he'd just accidentally set them off. "The last time _I_ saw someone with one was less than a week ago, _dearie_. I see zipperheads _frequently_. _You_ likely never seen one because you've never found yourself in the sorts of places those poor wretches end up once they're turned loose. Nobles, so concerned with ideals and intellectual nonsense. You never paid much attention to the results of your policies – the realities you created for the people you ruled."

"Me?" he squeaked. "I… ruled?"

With a sigh, she returned to her stitching. "No, not you personally. Your _kind_. Noble folk."

"I'm noble?"

"Well, not anymore, of course. You've been taken down quite a few pegs now."

What this meant, exactly, he wasn't sure, but he guessed it was probably true. He certainly felt "taken down a few pegs," even if he couldn't define the expression.

He thought for a while before daring to speak again. It was so easy to say the wrong thing, and he desperately wanted to say right things. "Okay, so… so I'm getting a zipper."

"Right. Almost finished, too."

"And nobles don't get zippers."

"Criminals get zippers."

Taking a moment to think that over several times, he eventually gasped. "I'm no criminal! I mean, sure, I don't remember anything, not even my name, but I'm sure I'm not a criminal."

"Ah, well," she said heavily, "it's them that's in power that decides what's criminal, dearie. Your side wasn't payin' attention, and now the power's in other hands, isn't it?"

"My side? What side? What did we do wrong?"

The stitching halted. "Nothin' terribly wrong, really. Just… carelessness. I mean, you just can't set a kingdom in motion and then turn your attention to other things, can you? When you shine all your light in one corner, there's three corners left in the dark."

She paused, and he saw her glance up at the door before she muttered, "And all manner of things can grow in the dark, dearie." The bitterness with which she said this was punctuated by the drawing of the final stitch to brutal tautness. His sharp intake of breath must have made her feel badly, because she rubbed the stitch spot gently before cutting the thread. She infused her voice with cheer like someone dumping soap into a running bath. "There we are, now. All fixed up professional-like."

"Thank you." He wasn't sure if that was the correct response, really – wasn't this mutilation? Should he be thanking someone for that? But she seemed so unhappy, and maybe he had caused that, so being nice to her was the least he could do, wasn't it?

Speaking of the least he could do, he was suddenly very aware of the discomfort from being stuck on this table for… however long he'd been like this. "Now I can get up, right? I mean, you're done sewing me up."

"No, 'fraid you'll be stayin' there for a few more hours. You'll be tempted to play with the zipper, and it's too soon for that. Can't have you loosening my handiwork."

"But _please_," he whined, which he was pretty sure he didn't want to do but couldn't help, "I'm so uncomfortable. I hurt all over. I need to _move!_"

"I wouldn't be in such a hurry to leave this room," the woman snapped, and again he had the sense that he was merely the fuse for her anger but not its primary target. "From here, you go straight to a cold, dark cell."

"Well, I'm already freezing, lying here with no clothes forever," he retorted. "How much worse can a little less light make things?"

She slammed down a tray, which caused a bunch of metal things to rattle sharply, and started to say something angry. But maybe she was having trouble with confusion too, because as he watched, he saw the anger die away, as though she'd lost her train of thought. Instead, she swept a strand of her fading red hair back behind her ear and moved out of his sight. He heard a door open and some rustling sounds, and then she was beside him with a stack of white cloth. Sheets, he realized.

"We've got no blankets, but a few layers of these should warm you up." One after another, she shook out four coarsely woven sheets and draped them over his shivering body. When they were all in place, she tucked them under to seal in his body heat.

Overwhelmed by the care, however little or belated, he felt wetness escape from the corner of one eye and trail down his cheek toward his ear. She scowled when she saw it and roughly dried it with a scratchy towel before grabbing a bottle from a cabinet. Using a medicine dropper to measure a precise amount of amber liquid, she cupped a protective hand beneath and came back to the table.

"Open up," she commanded, and he obeyed. The liquid was bitter and left a slight burning sensation in his mouth that faded before he could remember to complain. "This'll help you rest while we wait for your transfer."

"Okay," he said. He really was feeling quite warm now. Had he been cold before? He couldn't remember anymore.

He turned his head, as much as he could, to watch the woman as she placed used items into a sink and generally tidied up. She had made him warm, hadn't she? He should probably thank her.

"Are you my mother?" Wait. That wasn't thanking.

And she was clearly upset by the lack of thanks, too, because she just sort of hunched herself over the sink with her back to him for a moment. He should probably apologize now, but he needed to say the words to himself a few times to make sure it came out right.

But then she'd already turned back toward him, and this time there was mostly sadness in her eyes, with maybe some anger way down underneath. "Thank the stars, I'm nobody's mother, dearie."

And then she left the room, closing the door behind her, leaving him to wonder if he had thanked her for all she had done for him. But long before he'd puzzled that out, he was asleep.


	2. Chapter 2 The Prompt

_I know, I know, this took a long time. What can I say? The holidays were **not** good to me, kids._

_ Anyway, many, many thanks to my betas, Madigirl and AGraphicDesign, without whom this chapter would be a much lesser thing._

* * *

The worst thing about the cell wasn't how small it was, or how cold, damp, smelly, or dark. It wasn't the ancient filth of the floor or the rough metal shelf that served as a bed. It wasn't even the rats, and admittedly, the rats were pretty _awful._

No, he decided, the worst thing about the cell – the absolute, certain, very worst thing – was the noise.

From the moment he'd become aware of being in the cell, he'd been plagued by this din, a constant not-quite-white noise comprised of sentence fragments, nearly asked questions, incomplete answers. Voices jumped from topic to topic willy-nilly; statements were interrupted by pointless laughter. Conversations were derailed by non-sequiturs which then formed the basis for new conversations which were in turn derailed by_ other_ non-sequiturs.

A never-ending stream of vocalization seemed to substitute for running water here – dripping, trickling, saturating, and overflowing; it surged on and on until he feared he'd drown. Expressions of pain, fact, fear and despair, of frustration intermingled; sometimes they were punctuated by begging or sobbing or a fearful cackling that spoke not of joy, but of desperation, even madness.

He tried to ignore it, he tried to make fun of it, and he even tried to drown it out with his own voice. Nothing seemed to make a dent in the tidal waves of chaotic noise. Sometimes it was so unbearable that he found himself screaming for respite: "_Everybody shut up!_ I can't hear myself think!"

And as this announcement bounced desultorily off the dungeon walls, there was sudden silence, into which muted ambient sound gradually filtered – the dripping of a leak somewhere in the corridor; the distant laughter of two guards somewhere far away. The longed-for but eerie quiet bred a thought with an uncomfortable ring of truth: _I **am** hearing myself think._

In those moments, the stillness was unquestionably the worst thing about the cell. Fortunately, such moments never lasted long and were quickly forgotten… mostly.

0o0o0

Eventually, the jumble of misfired thoughts in his head seemed to find some semblance of order, and a degree of linear thought was restored. He was sure "restored" was the right expression; he had the sense that once, he hadn't been too shabby in the thinking department. It might have been a gradual process, or it might have happened all at once. He had no ability to track the passage of time, nor could his perceptions be fully trusted.

Now he could take better stock of his surroundings and try to analyze the situation, which gave him a feeling of purpose. He had no idea why he was in a dungeon, where the dungeon was located, or who was keeping him here. However, he did eventually deduce that he was the only prisoner in this particular wing. Occasionally, distant screams and harsh responses would waft to his ears along the drafty corridor, but they were never close enough for him to make out actual words. And the guards who brought him what he called, for the sake of reference, "food" each day refused to answer his questions with anything but jeers or slaps, but he never heard them jeering or slapping anyone else as they passed the other cells near his.

So it was a momentous event when the men in long coats finally marched into sight and deposited a man into the cell directly across from his. He crept close to the bars and watched intently as they shoved the newcomer inside, tripping him when he failed to stumble as they apparently intended, and laughing when he hit the floor. He remained on the floor – wisely, he thought – as the barred door was lowered, only deigning to stand erect when the guards were on their way back down the corridor.

The stranger was shaken, but his poise was impressive. It was clear from his fine clothing and well-cut graying hair that he was used to more pleasant surroundings and to being treated with respect and consideration, yet he remained remarkably calm and dignified as he slowly examined his surroundings with calculating blue eyes. Only his breathing, which was a bit more rapid than normal, gave away the fear he was feeling.

As a veteran resident, it was probably his duty to reassure the new arrival. "Don't worry," he said, too loudly. The man jumped in alarm, and he quickly lowered the volume of his voice. "Sorry. I just meant to say, it's not as bad as it looks. They mostly leave you alone, as long as you don't ask them too many questions." He laughed, a bit too loudly again, and added, "You should especially avoid asking the tall one what happened to his other eye. He's just a_ little_ bit sensitive, it seems." He smiled and touched the bruise he still bore on one cheek. Yep, still sore.

He stopped talking when he realized the other man was pressed against the bars, staring at him with an expression of shock. He took a step back and quickly glanced down at himself. All his clothes were on – correctly – with no indiscretions. He rubbed a hand along his face to check for unsightly food particles. He couldn't find an obvious reason for the guy to look so appalled by him, so he glanced behind him. Well, one of the rats _was_ making his rounds looking for discarded food again. Maybe he'd never seen one before.

"Ambrose?" the man asked in a hushed tone.

He frowned. Less than a minute here, and the guy was already naming the rats?

"My god, Ambrose!"

He smiled uncertainly. "Well, I'm not familiar with that particular deity, but I believe wholeheartedly in religious tolerance, so feel free to—hey, what's wrong? Are you ill?"

The newcomer's shoulders had drooped and his face was ashen. He stumbled back and shuffled toward the bench, sitting on it heavily. "We thought you were dead."

_Um. Okay._ "That's kind of an odd thing to assume about… someone you've never met."

"You don't remember anything? I'm not the least bit familiar?"

"Well, no offense, mister, but if I can't remember a single thing about _me_, there's not much hope that I'll remember _you_, now is there?"

The man hung his head. "No, there's no hope. No hope at all." His voice was thick. He seemed close to tears.

"I'm sorry!" he sputtered, since he'd obviously somehow caused the man distress, although he couldn't remember how. If there was anything worse than being unable to remember who he was, it was not being able to recall how he'd hurt someone. He'd spent lots of time worrying about what sort of misdeeds he'd committed in his forgotten past.

"At first, we'd held out hope that you'd find a way to escape," the man was saying, almost as though talking to himself. "Trask and some of the others thought it was foolish, wishful thinking, but the rest of us had faith in that brain of yours."

Here the stranger glanced up, and he could tell that he was looking at the zipper. Automatically, his hand stole up, checking that it hadn't worked itself open.

"But when weeks had passed with no sign of you and no word of your fate, we finally accepted that Azkadellia had executed you. Now, it seems… we were wrong." His tone was despairing, as though being wrong about a friend's death were the saddest thing imaginable.

"I'm sorry, but… who are you talking to?" Not the most sensitive response, he supposed, but it needed to be asked. He still saw no one else around but the rat.

Impatient, the man snapped, "Who? Is there anyone else here? I'm talking to _you_, Ambrose!"

"Me, Ambrose? _Me_ Ambrose? Wait – are you saying you know me? I have a name? And you know it?"

"Yes," the man said slowly and distinctly, "I know you, and your name is Ambrose. You're the… you _were_ the Queen's top advisor."

"What, me? Really? Wow! That's… that's pretty impressive, isn't it?"

The man smiled slightly, amused in spite of himself. "It certainly was."

"Okay, so I was the Queen's top advisor. Who were you? Did I know you well?"

"I'm Charles Farsing, the Queen's Minister of the Interior. You and I were colleagues."

"Colleagues, but not friends?"

"I considered you a friend."

"Did I consider you a friend?"

Charles laughed. The newly named Ambrose found it unexpectedly delightful to hear. "As far as I know, you did. We played chess once a week, a standing arrangement for almost two annuals."

Ambrose wrinkled his forehead in thought. "Well, I doubt I would have done that if I didn't enjoy your company. I was probably smart enough to come up with an excuse if I'd wanted to."

"I've no doubt," Charles said with a smile. In the however long he'd been here, Ambrose had never seen a sincere smile. It flooded his heart with a warmth that both soothed and stung.

"Tell me more!" he said excitedly. "Who else did I know? What was I like?"

"Well, hmm." Charles leaned back against the wall and thought. "You were, of course, very well-known at court. You knew all the important officials, everyone else in the Queen's Cabinet."

"The Queen! I must have known her as well."

"It would have been difficult to advise her otherwise."

Ambrose laughed. "Very true. So, how did she come to choose me as her… What did you say my name is?"

"Ambrose."

"Ambrose. Right. So how did she come to choose me to advise her?"

"As I understand it, you were spotted while you were still at university. You had made quite a name for yourself as a scientific researcher and engineer. The Queen was advised to offer you a position in the Division of Science."

"Science! I _knew_ I was a scientist of some sort. I could just tell. What else?"

"Well, you continued to draw attention with a series of new technologies. The Queen was so impressed that she elevated you to positions of greater responsibility several times. Unfortunately, this ruffled some feathers amongst some of the more senior scientists."

"Really? Why?"

"They didn't like reporting to a much younger man."

"What much younger man?"

Charles sighed. "That would be you, Ambrose."

"Oh. I'm young?"

"Well, you were at the time, at least."

"Wow. Yeah, I guess that would tend to upset older people. What happened then?"

"Well, a lucky thing came up: a cave-in at the largest selsium mine in the O.Z."

Ambrose stared, not sure he understood properly. "That's a lucky thing?"

"It was lucky for you, as it turned out. It was a huge crisis – forty-seven men were trapped inside a mountain. Prevailing wisdom dictated a traditional approach – drill, dig, assess, repeat. Very slow, and only successful in saving lives about forty percent of the time.

"You proposed a radical new approach, using experimental technology that melted rock and burned it away. There was great resistance to the idea by those in the Division of Science who didn't support you, but the Queen approved the use of the technique."

"She did?" He didn't have a single memory of the Queen, but it was absurdly pleasing to learn that she'd had more faith in his judgment than in his detractors'.

"Your idea worked. All the miners who'd survived the cave-in were rescued. The Queen realized that you possessed not just a fine technical and scientific mind but a gift for analysis and imagination, and that was when she realized that you would be even more valuable to the kingdom as one of her personal advisors."

Ambrose could only gape, mesmerized by the story of a life he'd lived but would never remember. It was hard to know whether to revel in the knowledge of his forgotten triumphs, or to feel cheated by the theft if his awareness of them. He tried to make up for it all by repeating Charles's words to himself several times, striving to memorize them, if such a thing was possible for him.

"You really have no memory of any of it? Nothing at all?"

He shook his head. "I wish I did. It all sounds so wonderful."

Charles stood suddenly and came to the bars of his cell, peering at Ambrose intently. "Try very hard to remember. Can you recall anything at all about, say, the last time you and I saw each other?"

Ambrose was puzzled. "About… No, did you forget? I can't remember anything about, well… anything."

"Yes, but have you ever had anyone around who _did_ remember to prompt you with details?"

"No, I haven't!" Ambrose jumped up excitedly. "What a great idea! Prompt away, Charles. Go on, try it!"

"All right, just keep your voice down." Charles glanced around, which Ambrose thought was a little silly – it's not like the rats, or even the guards, were likely to be interested in the story of two friends' last mutually cognizant moments together. "Close your eyes. Clear your mind and picture yourself in a room."

"A big room?"

"No, not big."

"A small one, then."

"Call it medium-sized. A dark, medium-sized room."

"Is it nighttime?"

"No, mid-afternoon."

"Then why is it dark?"

"The shades are drawn."

"Why are the—"

"Ambrose, please!" Charles's quiet voice became sharp.

"Right. Sorry."

Ambrose pictured being in a murky room with Charles. He imagined the other man's features smoothed by the dimness, the gray of his hair darkened in a flattering trick of too little light. They were talking not in whispers but in muted voices, as though trying not to wake someone sleeping in a nearby room. Strangely, he imagined more than two voices. Several more, in fact. "Are we alone in the room?" he asked without opening his eyes.

Charles hesitated before answering. "No," he finally said.

Ambrose squinted behind his closed eyelids. No faces, but he saw other people in brocaded coats like the ones he and Charles wore. "Is it a meeting of the Queen's cabinet?"

"Not exactly. Why do you ask? Do you remember something?"

He wondered distantly why Charles sounded anxious rather than excited at the prospect, but was too busy trying to decide if he was remembering, or merely fabricating a scene based on Charles's suggestion. He tried to relax and let the scene take him wherever it went.

There was a solemnity to the gathering. He couldn't really make out what was being said, but the look on Charles's face was grave, and there was a feeling of urgency in the room. Of course, maybe that was just because he wanted so badly to believe this was a real memory, however murky.

"Well?" the here-and-now Charles was asking. "What do you see? Can you remember anything?"

Ambrose was getting irritated. How was he to know if he was remembering a real event? Who was to say that the scene in his head wasn't a product of an intense desire to remember coupled with a healthy dollop of extreme suggestibility? Concentrating harder, he tried to see more of the darkened room, to make out faces. Maintaining the scene was a struggle; it kept losing focus, each element skidding away as attention was applied to it. It was like grabbing a bar of soap in a bathtub.

He couldn't tell how many people were present, but he sensed there were eight or ten altogether. He was addressing them, explaining something, as they all looked at a diagram on a large piece of paper spread over a desktop, which he illuminated with a small light. He thought there was mention of the Queen. Perhaps it _was_ some kind of informal cabinet meeting.

"Was the Queen at this meeting?" he asked hopefully.

"No."

How disappointing. He would really have liked to see her, even if it was only his imagined version of her. Had he fallen so far that he was no longer worthy of even a remembered glimpse of the Queen who had relied upon his judgment?

This was no longer exciting or fun. Now that he knew a little about his former life, he also knew exactly what sort of things he had lost, and that made the lack of memories even more punishing. If he had learned that his life was insignificant, the loss of all memory of it would perhaps be easier to bear. Now knowing that he had made real contributions to the lives of others and had helped shape the Queen's decisions for the kingdom just further fueled his desire – no, his _need_ – to remember it. If he couldn't remember, it was as though it had never happened, and he really needed to know for a fact that he _had_ actually happened.

Opening his eyes, Ambrose turned from the bars and stomped away. He couldn't make much of an exit, given the confines of the cell, but he did what he could.

"What's wrong? Did you remember something?"

"No, but thanks so much for all the detailed prompting."

"I set the scene. I didn't think I should say too much."

"Oh, well, that was nicely handled, then."

"There's no reason to be angry with me because you can't remember anything, Ambrose. I'm not the one who did this to you."

Now that brought up an interesting question. "Did what to me? _Why_ can't I remember anything?"

Charles frowned in surprise. "You… don't know?"

"_What? _Don't know _what?_"

For a moment, Charles seemed at a loss. "It's… Oh, I can't believe they didn't tell you already."

"Maybe they did! How would I know for sure? Maybe that's just one more thing I've forgotten. Why don't you tell me again, all right? Then we'll both be sure I know about it."

"Very well. Azkadellia's people performed what's known as a criminal extraction upon you. A significant portion of your brain was removed from your skull, taking with it much of your identity, your memories, and your knowledge."

Ambrose heard the words in the way that one feels a light breeze blowing the tails of one's coat. Nothing of significance stirred. It didn't sound real. "I don't understand. I don't know any Azkadellia. Why would someone do that?"

"You do know her. Did, anyway. And apparently, she did it because you wouldn't tell her what she wanted to know."

"What?"

"I believe it was something to do with one of your inventions. I don't know for sure, I wasn't there."

"Then how do you know exactly what she did to me? The brain thing, I mean."

"Because of the zipper! It's not as though I wouldn't know what that means."

The zipper. Ambrose reached up to touch it gingerly. He'd done this over and over, and never questioned why it was there. Or had he? He couldn't remember.

"You… you've seen people with zippers like this before?"

Charles threw up his hands, strangely exasperated. "Of course! We all have. It's what's done to those who commit particularly vile crimes who resist rehabilitation by other methods. Hence the term 'criminal extraction.'"

Ambrose cocked his head and thought this over. He wanted to make sure he understood it all properly. "You mean this is a routine punishment?"

"I wouldn't call it routine. It's reserved for criminals who defy rehabilitation."

"So the answer is to rip out their brains and turn them into… into…" Was he unable remember the right word, or could he simply not bear to apply it to himself? "That's utterly barbaric!"

"I'm so sorry, Ambrose. It should never have happened to you."

"It shouldn't happen to anyone! What sort of enlightened society would condone such a monstrous practice?"

Charles bristled. "A society that rejects the notion of capital punishment while recognizing an obligation to protect the public. A society that seeks to ensure public safety without resorting to putting the worst offenders to death. The sentence is neither celebrated nor common."

Something tickled his mind. "I think someone told me that this happens pretty frequently." He tried to remember where he'd heard that, frowning with the effort of wading through the noise that was kicking up again inside his head. Even amidst the din of his whirlwind of almost-thoughts, the half-remembered assertion about the frequency of "zipperheads" rang with authenticity. Where had he gotten it?

"It's not as though it's done for petty thievery or traffic violations!" Charles said hotly. "Only the most reprehensible, incorrigible criminals receive such a punishment!"

"Yeah?" Ambrose struggled to stay focused on the conversation, which he felt was important even as he was losing the grasp of why it was. "What kind of criminal was _I_, Charles? What made _me_...?" The noise was shockingly bad now. What were the words Charles had used? "What made _me_ 'reprehensible and incorrigible'?" He was aware of panting and grunting as the chaos tried to overwhelm his train of thought. "Was it my 'gift for analysis and imagination?' Or… or maybe m-my devotion to the… the Queen?"

And then it was just too much. The clamor in his mind was like standing in the atrium of the Great Hall in Central City while a two hundred-piece brass band played at top volume. He clutched his disfigured skull in anguish and was dimly aware of bawling, "By the suns, shut up! Shut up! _Shut_ _up!_"

Ambrose fell to his knees and tried to concentrate on just breathing – in and out; it was very predictable – and gradually noticed that the racket was receding. As the noise faded like departing fog, he could hear Charles saying, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I wish it… Why couldn't they have just… I'm sorry, Ambrose. I'm so, so sorry."

_For what?_ Ambrose wondered. _What's he apologizing for?_ He had a sense that they'd been arguing, but he wasn't quite sure what about. Releasing his head from the death-grip of his hands, Ambrose looked through the bars at his fellow prisoner.

The other man – what was he called? Oh yes, Charles – was slumped on his bench. Amazing what a difference posture could make in how one was perceived, Ambrose thought. When Charles sat or stood straight, you almost dared not question or disagree with him; he had such gravity, such dignity. Hunched over, he looked just like everyone else. When he spoke now, it was in the hoarse, whispery voice of a tired old man.

"It was never meant to be used this way, Ambrose. No one intended it to come to this."

"What?" Ambrose was surprised to find he was a little hoarse, too. His throat had a raw feel to it. Had he been screaming? "What wasn't meant to be used what way?"

Charles sighed heavily, closing his eyes as his head lolled back to rest against the wall. "Criminal extraction. It was intended only to protect society from individuals who could not follow its rules, not to rape brilliant, loyal minds to obtain information."

The whole conversation came back to him suddenly, or enough of it that Ambrose felt the heat of remembered anger. With a little stoking, he could be angry again, but it was really too much work. "Oh. Right."

He'd meant only to indicate that he now remembered what they'd been talking about, but Charles apparently thought he was being sarcastic. "The penalty_ was_ meant for the greater good! I'll grant there's a certain brutality to it, but it was never, ever meant to exploit or to torment!" Charles rubbed his face tiredly. "_Anything_ can be perverted by evil intent."

Ambrose sat down on the bench, resting his elbows on his knees. He felt exhausted… or perhaps he was just empathizing with Charles's obvious fatigue? "I suppose so."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Ambrose blinked. Was the question rhetorical, or was Charles seriously demanding a definition of "I suppose so"? Feeling like a man with ten legs walking through a minefield, he chose not to answer.

"You're suggesting that there was _already_ evil intent? That only an evil system would practice something like partial brain extraction to keep criminals in line, is that it?"

What under the suns was the right answer? _No_ would likely be rejected as a lie, and_yes_ would simply provoke more defensiveness. "Maybe?"

Seemingly reinvigorated, Charles startled him by slamming a palm against the metal bench and launching himself to his feet, beginning to pace back and forth. "Ours is not an evil society, Ambrose! The Outer Zone has always been renowned for its commitment to fairness and public welfare."

"Okay."

"We are not a cruel people, surgically altering people's brains just to penalize them. We did it because they were a danger to others and could not be persuaded to change, for their own good or the good of the O.Z."

"All right."

"There's nothing evil about keeping the kingdom safe!"

"No, there isn't."

"I didn't like that it was necessary, you know. I didn't enjoy any reminder that there were people who just couldn't be set on the path to good citizenship any other way. It was never pleasant when I happened to see one of those poor devils wandering Central City, post-extraction. I often gave them a few notes to help them find their way to food and shelter."

"That was good of you," Ambrose said, meaning it.

"Oh, you're thinking I could have done more! That I was making a token gesture to ease my conscience."

"No, I—"

"Sometimes things are necessary, Ambrose, unpleasant things that we'd prefer didn't exist. This is one of those things."

"Okay."

"But the circumstances," Charles said, suddenly seeming desperate, clinging to one of the horizontal bars, "the circumstances are what make the difference. Ambrose, when I saw what they had done to you, I was… I was horrified. Horrified! There is no way this should ever, _ever_ have happened to a man like you."

Ambrose considered it. Something was niggling. "That's not exactly true," he said.

Charles's face became stone. "What? That it shouldn't have happened? Or do you think I wasn't horrified?"

"Yes! I mean, no! I mean…" How to convey what he really meant?

"Well, I was! I was devastated to learn what had happened to you."

"No, I believe that," Ambrose said earnestly. "It's just that… well, you didn't look… horrified, exactly."

"What?"

"Shocked, yes, and upset and appalled and like that. You were horrified that it was _me_ that it happened to."

Charles was silent for a good many seconds. "But not horrified on general principle. Is that what you're getting at? You understand that it's not the first time I have seen such a person, right?"

"Right." Ambrose wasn't sure what else to say. He hadn't thought it in so many words, but he had certainly felt what Charles had just said.

"How dare you presume to know what I feel!"

The explosion was unexpected, and Ambrose jumped. Charles's face was contorted with a fiery anger that didn't seem completely appropriate in the context of their conversation.

"You sound like that fool Lord Lessing and his ilk, the ones who were always whining that criminal extraction was worse than death. What would you have us do? Fill the O.Z. with prison after prison to accommodate all the incorrigibles, straining our resources to provide them with food, clothing, and shelter for as long as they lived while law-abiding citizens struggled to make ends meet? Would that be better for our society, Ambrose? Is that what you'd prefer to see?"

Ambrose said nothing, frantically searching his own scattered thoughts. _Was_ he saying that? He didn't remember saying it, or even thinking it.

"Or no, perhaps you'd rather we just _turn them loose as they are_," Charles continued, more wound up than ever. He was pacing the cell, punctuating his words with gestures more violent than he usually used. "Yes, _that's_ it. We should give them a nice stay in prison, then let them out when it's done even though they have_proven_ they will immediately resume their unlawful and antisocial activities. Yes, _innocent people_ will get hurt. That's the price we have to pay to _respect the rights of everyone_, isn't it? Even those who have no regard for their Queen and their fellow citizens!"

"Um—"

"We _don't_ do that, Ambrose," Charles cried, slamming his hand against the barred door, "because to set free people who are definitely going to do harm would be _evil!_ And allowing them to continue living with that impulse to do harm, _that_ would be evil as well. Yes, on the face of it, criminal extraction seems cruel, even barbaric, but it's ultimately an act of compassion – for society as a whole, and for the individual afflicted with the impulse to destroy. Surely you can understand that, even now."

Ambrose thought maybe he could understand that. It was a very persuasive argument. At least, it seemed like it. It certainly seemed to be persuading Charles.

"That's the thing about evil, Ambrose. Sometimes it feels better, because it allows you to avoid making a hard decision. You convince yourself that you're doing the necessary thing, and that makes it seem okay. But when you do that, Ambrose, when you accept any evil as necessary –_any_ evil – you're lowering society's overall resistance to other _kinds_ of evil."

The zipper chose that moment to itch, and Ambrose reached up to scratch along the right seam. He dug a fingernail a bit too deeply and winced at the pain it caused. When he looked up, he was alarmed to see Charles's face had turned ghostly pale. He stared at Ambrose like a man seeing his own reflection… and not recognizing himself.

What a weird thought.

Charles got up and moved toward the back of his cell, hugging himself as though against a sudden chill. He was upset, hurting, and Ambrose didn't understand quite why. He had a sense that he'd somehow been the cause, though, and that was not acceptable.

"Charles?" Charles didn't turn around or answer, so he said it again. "Charles?"

The other man sighed, his shoulders lifting and dropping, but still didn't turn around. "What?"

Ambrose hadn't thought it through this far, so he had to take a few seconds to figure what to say. He so badly wanted to make Charles feel better. Ah! He had it. "Charles, I think you're right. It's… it's probably the right thing, even though it seems wrong. The thing, I mean." He struggled to remember the name, brightening when he found it. "Criminal extraction. I'm sure that society is overall better off with it."

Charles still didn't turn around. Ambrose was getting desperate. He felt he would say anything, anything at all, to make those shoulders straighten.

"In fact, I probably deserved this," he said, putting behind the words the weight of belief he didn't feel. "I probably did do something, sometime, something I can't remember, obviously, that rated—"

Charles spun around then, and Ambrose was surprised by the anger he saw in the man's eyes. "_No!_ You _didn't!_ And don't ever let them—"

Heavy footfalls surprised them both. A group of four men in long leather coats were marching down the corridor toward their cells. Charles apparently forgot his anger as fear elbowed its way to the forefront. Ambrose didn't realize he was shrinking away from them until he hit the bench with the backs of his knees and sat down unexpectedly.

"Hello, Charles," said the leader of the little group.

"Lonot." Charles spat at the floor, somehow making the act look regal rather than vulgar. His poise and defiance in the face of his obvious terror made Ambrose feel proud.

The man he'd called Lonot merely laughed. There was nothing regal about that. "You know, this cell doesn't really suit you, Charles. Let me take you away from it."

"And go where?"

"Somewhere where we can talk," Lonot said. "Where I can ask you questions, and you can give me answers."

"I'll save you the trouble. I have no answers."

"You underestimate yourself, old friend." At a nod from Lonot, one of the other long-coated men unlocked and opened the door to Charles's cell. "Come. You'll find we have some excellent techniques for unlocking hidden memories."

Ambrose jumped to his feet. No one saw it, as the longcoats all had their backs to his cell, and Charles was staring at Lonot.

"I… I won't come with you." There was a hollow, faltering quality to the older man's voice, the sound of the powerless wielding sticks against cannons.

Another nod from Lonot, and the two other men entered the cell. _How do they know the exact meaning of each nod?_ Ambrose thought. _How can they tell 'you, unlock the cell' from 'you other two, go in and drag him out'? How do they know which is to do what?_

But the men weren't dragging Charles out, yet. The first man backhanded him, sending him staggering backward. He fell on the bench, bounced off, and landed on the floor. The second longcoat delivered a vicious kick to his ribs. Charles gave a strangled, breathless cry and doubled into an almost fetal curl.

"Stop it!" shouted Ambrose. "Leave him alone!"

They ignored him entirely as, after another nod from Lonot, the two inside the cell lifted Charles by his arms and began dragging him out of the cell.

"No! No, stop! Don't do it!" Ambrose was pressing his body hard against the bars of his own cell, reaching out with one arm in an attempt to… what? What could he hope to do? And yet, he didn't stop. He continued to yell even as Lonot started back down the corridor and the two carrying Charles followed.

He only stopped when the last of the longcoats finally spared him an irritated glance and abruptly stuck a long stick through the bars, touching Ambrose and filling him with a familiar buzzing pain that engulfed everything everywhere. _I'm being electrocuted,_ he thought. The idea of death didn't seem so bad, for an instant.

He didn't even feel himself hit the floor.


	3. Chapter 3 Rhapsody of Hope

_I'm ba-a-ack! Miss me?_

_As usual, the betas are to be thanked for their hard work and endless patience: Madigirl, Blackletter, and Agraphicdesign.  
_

* * *

He crouched down to look under the bench. Not there. He moved to the corner, kicking aside a few stray pebbles. Not there. He moved to the next corner. Not there, either. 

From the moment he'd awakened, he'd been scouring the cell. He'd lost something; he knew it, even if he couldn't remember what it might have been. Whatever it was, he felt the loss of it in the pit of his stomach, in the racing of his pulse, in the erratic rhythm of his breathing with the passage of each minute. So he felt compelled to search and search and search, even though he was perfectly aware that if there were anything to be found, it would have turned up on the very first pass. Or the second, at most.

Oh, but his head hurt. He stopped combing the cell and put both hands to it, rubbing the forehead and sides. It was a strange kind of headache, as though his skull wanted to be smaller than it was. Thatwas a fanciful thing to imagine, because skulls couldn't want things. Could they? No, only the brain had consciousness.

He stopped rubbing to stare unseeing at the wall. Brain. His brain. There had been something about that, hadn't there? Earlier? Before he'd lost… whatever it was.

He had to find it. He needed it back.

Sounds of approaching men interrupted him before he could resume the search. For reasons he didn't understand, he was filled with apprehension. He hurried to the barred door to watch as two men in long leather coats "helped" a disheveled and ailing older man down the corridor. They "helped" him to the door of the cell across from his, opened the cell, and then "helped" him into it with enough tender loving force to thrust him against the back wall. Somehow, despite obvious exhaustion and apparent injury, the man kept himself upright until the brutes closed the door and walked away, laughing.

The man dropped onto the bench with a groan, carefully stretching himself out on his back. There was dried blood beneath his nose and he seemed to be trying not to use his right arm.

He wanted to say, "Are you all right?", but it was obvious the man _wasn't_ all right, and it's not as though he could do anything to make him feel better, so it seemed almost cruel to ask. Still, etiquette demanded he say something. "Hello."

"Hello, Ambrose," the man said tiredly, like a grandfather trying to nap while pestered by his eager grandson.

"Ambrose," he repeated softly, glancing around automatically for a rat, for some reason. "Is that me? I'm Ambrose?"

The man didn't open his eyes. "Yes."

"So you know me."

"Yes."

Ambrose fought the impulse to resume his cell-searching by sitting on his own bench. He sensed there were things he needed to sort out. Thinking very hard through the headache, he said, "There was somebody else here, earlier. At least, I think there was. He knew me, too." A thought fragment floated by like a feather in the breeze. "Charles! I think his name was Charles."

"I'm Charles," the man said.

"Wow, really? What are the odds that I'd meet two Charleses in one day?"

The man merely sighed. Ambrose peered at him, leaving the bench to sit cross-legged on the floor inside the cell door. "You look a little like him, actually. Only he wasn't hurt. And his coat was cleaner."

"Well," grunted the new Charles as he sought to find a more comfortable position on the hard bench, "perhaps he hadn't spent a few hours being questioned by Lonot and his thugs."

"Oh, that's probably true. Is that what happened to you?" He waited, but Charles didn't bother answering. He thought he might have fallen asleep, but then the other man coughed a couple of times, bringing his left hand to his mouth out of polite habit, so obviously, he was still awake. "What kind of questions did they ask you?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"Oh." Ambrose thought about that until insight struck him. "_Oh._ Is that why you're hurt? You didn't want to talk about it to them, either?"

"They seem to think I can tell them things that I don't know."

"That's got to be frustrating. What kinds of things?"

"Did I not just say I don't want to talk about it?"

"Hmm. Yes, I'm pretty sure you did. I tend not to remember things very well."

"You don't say."

"For instance, I've forgotten what you told me my name is."

Another heavy sigh. "It's Ambrose."

"Right. Thank you."

It was clear that Charles wasn't feeling talkative, so Ambrose tried to respect his wishes and stopped efforts at conversation. It was hard; he was so glad to have someone to talk to who didn't hit him or call him cruel names. The words kept trying to spill out of his mouth, but because he didn't want to irritate Charles, he clenched his jaw and kept them inside.

After some minutes, Charles seemed to be dozing off. As part of that process, his right arm twitched in response to some quasi-wakeful dream, and he grunted with pain. Ambrose couldn't stop himself anymore.

"What's wrong with your arm?"

Charles sighed again. "Lonot didn't like my inability to answer his questions."

"So he hurt your arm?"

Struggling back to a sitting position, Charles grunted again. "He threw me against the wall and twisted the arm behind me. It felt as though he were breaking it, but I think it's just badly strained." With his left hand, he gingerly felt his nose. "Luckily, he didn't break my nose, either."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" It sounded stupid as soon as he said it. He was a fellow prisoner in a separate cell. What _could_ he do? For anyone?

A funny look crossed Charles's face. Like the blinking of a firefly's light, there was first amusement and affection, followed by what Ambrose could only interpret as anger and guilt. Charles brushed it all aside quickly, however, until there was nothing there but faint desperation masked by a forced pleasantness.

"You _can_ do something for me," Charles said, and Ambrose forgot everything in his excitement. "You can tell me what you remember about the last time you and I saw each other. Outside of here, of course."

He felt his face fall. "Why does everyone want to hear about that?"

Charles looked sharply at him. "They've been asking you about that, too?"

"_He_ did. The other Charles."

"Oh," Charles said, relaxing, "him. Well, try and remember for _me_, this time, all right?"

"All right." Ambrose closed his eyes. He pictured the face of his fellow captive – tired, pained, worried – and almost immediately it was replaced by the image from his last attempt to conjure up such a memory: the face of the other Charles, dimly lit, healthier, but with that same look of desperate worry in the eyes.

"You're him," Ambrose said, glaring accusingly.

"Who?"

"The other Charles. They're both you."

"Yes."

"You should have told me. I feel like a fool!"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel foolish."

He hated not being able to remember things, hated that he had to rely on someone else to know even the most basic details about himself, about his former life. Recalling memories should be as easy and natural as drinking water or smiling. But for him, it was like climbing a tree without arms. In fact... "What did you say my name is, again?"

"Ambrose. Your name is Ambrose."

Why couldn't he hang on to that detail? Each time he tried, it disappeared – a word written in dry sand on a windy day.

He was tempted to get to his feet and rant about it all. Then again, if he could find his way to just one clear memory, wasn't it possible that more would follow? Maybe it would be like opening a stuffed, ill-organized closet – everything would come tumbling out at once. Ambrose closed his eyes and went back to the dim room inside his mind.

As before when he'd pictured this scene, he felt a sense of great urgency. This time, he could see all of the faces, though only one was perfectly clear. Charles was solemn and apprehensive, concentrating on the diagram as Ambrose explained it to the small gathering. Everyone there was quite focused on what he was saying and showing them. Clearly, the information Ambrose was disseminating was of critical importance.

He strained to produce an image of what was on the paper, but like the retention of his own name, it remained elusive. He could only see the group nodding to one another as though coming to an agreement, and then he began tearing the paper into smaller bits. The fragments were tossed into the fireplace, and they all stood around watching it burn!

Panic overcame him. He needed to know what had been on that paper! It must be significant – everyone in that room had hung on his every word. He needed to know what he'd had to say that could command such somber attention, such respect. This was proof that he had once mattered, that he had not always been a pathetic wretch with a scooped-out skull and no power to affect anything.

He concentrated, trying to replay the memory again from a different angle, but all he saw were the same things: solemn men listening to him, a large paper with an indistinct diagram, and then the paper being torn up and burned.

What point was there in remembering the gathering and not the reason for it? Why recall the attention everyone was paying him and not what he was saying to them? Why forget the specifics of the diagram on the paper but record the act of destroying and burning it in great detail? What was the point of memories that told him _nothing?_

Angrily, he uncrossed a leg and kicked at the bars, forgetting how close to them he was and sending himself into an unplanned backward somersault. As he landed in a lopsided sitting position, the back of his head slammed against the bench, and he spat a curse he hadn't remembered until that moment.

"Any luck?" Charles asked, sounding amused. He was still sitting up, but he was slumped against the wall and looked in dire need of a nap.

"Yes! _Bad_ luck," Ambrose snapped. "When they carved up my brain, it seems they took anything of any value. Nothing left but stupid, out-of-context stuff that's of no use at all!"

Charles looked sadly sympathetic, but his words were far from comforting. "Well, perhaps that's for the best."

"Easy for you to say!" Ambrose shouted, climbing to his feet and approaching the bars. "You still have all your faculties, so excuse me if I think your perspective lacks relevance."

"I only meant that—"

The pain in Ambrose's head had escalated to an alarming level, and he threw up his arms all around it as though to seal out the invading sensations.

"What's wrong?"

"My _head hurts_, all right?" He knew he was unfairly taking out his frustration and pain on Charles, but he really couldn't care at the moment. There wasn't room for anger, loss, a killer headache, _and_ consideration all at once. "It's been hurting ever since I woke up. That stupid stick thing doesn't seem to agree with nearly-empty heads."

"Stick thing?"

"You know, the electrified rod. The device that shows you what toast must feel like."

"Oh, yes. I was treated to a demonstration of that myself today. Several times. How long ago did it happen?"

"Do you see any clocks in here? How should I know how long ago! I was just yelling at them to leave Charles alone – wait, that was you – yelling at them to leave _you_ alone, and then one of them proceeded to dry-fry me."

"Ah. Well, that was very foolish."

"I'll say! It's not like a little yelling could hurt anything. I was absolutely no threat to them at all."

Charles sighed. His eyelids were drooping and he sounded as though he was losing a battle for both patience and wakefulness. "I meant it was foolish of_you_."

"Oh, really? Well, that's some gratitude."

"Gratitude for what? An ineffectual show of pointless resistance on my behalf? As far as I can tell, they had no trouble dispatching you while dragging me off to be tortured, so I'd say your efforts were wasted. The next time they come for me, use what's left of your head and stay out of it."

Ambrose felt his cheeks grow hot. Insults and dismissive attitudes from the guards were easily shrugged off, but they felt different coming from a friend. "Fine! When they come for you again, I'll just sit right here and watch. All right?"

"All right."

"Maybe I'll even cheer them on. Or… or whistle a carefree little tune. I might even yawn!"

"Very sensible," Charles said sleepily.

"Oh, you'll think so!" said Ambrose. It didn't really make sense, but it seemed in the spirit of things. "And by the way, aren't you just a little bit full of yourself, assuming that they'll even bother with you anymore? I mean, you said you have nothing to tell them. Maybe they realize that now and won't come for you again." It wasn't until he'd said it that he realized how badly he wanted that to be true.

Charles spoke with eyes closed and a voice that was halfway to sleep already. "They'll be back."

There was anger that was truly anger, and there was anger that was really just fear. Ambrose didn't know how he knew that, but he knew which one was making him yell.

"Oh, sure, because you're so important, aren't you? A real big-shot. Well, who knows? Maybe the next time, they'll be coming for _me!_"

Charles didn't open his eyes, but merely waved his left hand in a gesture that might have been either sarcastic or conciliatory.

Ambrose meant to keep on yelling, because he wanted Charles to stay awake. If he went to sleep, it would be like they had taken him away again. Instead, however, his wayward partial brain supplied a response to his own silly prediction: _Why would they come for you? Anything they wanted to know from you, they already have in their grasp._

Already in their grasp?

Oh. Right.

His brain.

The truth of it weighed him down like a cast-iron shirt, and he sank onto the bench. It would be awful to be tortured for what one knew, and yet, in a way, knowing that his secrets had been wrested away surgically seemed worse. He wondered how much he'd withstood prior to that violation. Had he suffered, like Charles, or had they simply put him under the knife right after his capture? How could he ever know?

And what about Charles? Would they eventually do the same thing to him? If so, his friend would cease to know himself, and that meant he'd cease to know Ambrose, as well. When that happened, when there was no one around to tell him who he was… who would he be then?

"Charles," he said urgently, desperately, "what is my name, again?"

The answer was a long time coming, but Charles managed to forestall sleep just long enough to say, "Your name is Ambrose. I suggest… you write it down."

Oh, ha ha. Write it down, indeed. "You know," he muttered, "if this prison thing doesn't work out, you have absolutely no future as a comedian."

And yet, there was a certain amount of sense to the suggestion. If he had the name in writing, he wouldn't be dependent on Charles for it anymore. Hmm.

Suddenly, the only thing Ambrose wanted more than to have his name written down was… well, there's wasn't _anything_ he wanted more. He had to have it. He needed it.

There was a distinct shortage of writing materials about, but he was desperate enough to be inventive. Whispering the name over and over to retain it, Ambrose tugged at a loose button on the cuff of one his coat sleeves until it came off. He held it in front of his face, considering it carefully. It was dull with tarnish now, but once all the buttons on this coat had shone like brassy stars, just like in that scene from his memory.

That thought distracted him. In that scene, all the men gathered were wearing coats like his, including Charles. Yet, Charles was not wearing such a coat now. At least, he didn't think so. He glanced across the hall to note the other man's clothing. Nope, he was wearing a dark gray coat. The coat was of good quality (again, no idea how he knew that), but it was definitely not part of a uniform. Huh.

There was something in his hand. Ambrose looked at it. Turned out it was a button of tarnished brass. It looked as though it had come from his coat. He pulled away the frayed thread that still clung to it. Hadn't he intended to use the button for something?

As though on cue, a fragment of conversation replayed itself in his mind:

"_Charles, what is my name, again?"_

"_Your name is Ambrose. I suggest you write it down."_

Yes! _That_ was what he was about to do. Raising the button, he placed it against the back of his cell and used the edge to etch the name A M B R O S E into the cold stone.

He stopped to admire the work and was struck by a sense of completion. He noticed suddenly that the compulsion to search his cell over and over seemed to have finally passed.

"Look, Charles," he said, peering into the other man's cell. But Charles had stretched out on the bench, sound asleep, and there was no reaching him right now.

Ambrose turned back to his wall, comforted by the crudely written proof of his own existence. It struck him that further explanation was required, and so he continued to write with the edge of his button, filling the air with tiny scratching noises as his friend across the hall slept on.

0o0o0

When the guards came to deliver the slop that prisoners were expected to consume for nourishment – or perhaps it was just another form of torture – Charles finally woke up. It might have had something to do with all the noise they made, spouting vile epithets and taunts in loud voices, but it was actually the result of having half a bucket of cold water tossed on him though the bars as he slept.

Ambrose sat cross-legged on his bench and watched. He wanted to say something, and saying something would probably have gotten water thrown on _him_, too, or worse. But he was practicing "staying out of it," as someone – Charles, that's who it was – had asked him to do.

Charles reacted to the water about the way one would expect, jerking awake and rolling off the bench to hit the hard stone floor with a yelp. The guards reacted the way one expects sadistic jerks to respond to such things, namely, with loutish guffaws.

"Dinner is served,_ m'lord_," the one with the missing eye drawled, executing an elaborate, if ill-performed, bow. He then kicked a dented metal plate carrying a puddle of unidentifiable stew-like stuff through the barred door. It scraped noisily along the floor for about two feet, coming to rest a few inches from Charles's face.

When the guards were gone, Charles sniffed the plate and made a face.

"It tastes as bad as it smells," Ambrose said sympathetically, scooping some from his own dish and eating it from his fingers.

Charles pushed the dish away and lifted himself to a sitting position. He ran a hand through his now wet, uncombed hair and tried to wring some of the water out of his coat.

"As bad as it is, though," said Ambrose, continuing to eat, "starvation is worse."

"I'm not so sure."

"Well, I'm still around, and I don't think I would be if I didn't eat. Go on, have some. You can't keep going otherwise."

"That's sound advice only if you wish to keep going."

Frowning, Ambrose put his plate down and came to the bars. "Hey, now, let's not have that kind of talk. You have to hang on, Charles. There's always hope."

"Is there?"

"You bet there is! Things can always get better. Want proof?" He waited, nearly bursting with eagerness, until Charles actually nodded before continuing. "I can tell you my name now. Without asking first, I mean. Ready? It's Ambrose! Wanna see how I know?"

Charles raised an eyebrow. Proudly, Ambrose pranced to the back of his cell and pointed to the wall. On it were faint words scratched in neat block letters:

MY NAME IS

A M B R O S E

"See? You told me to write it down, and I did."

"So I see. However did you do it? Where did you get a tool?"

"Oh, that's the most ingenious part." Grinning widely, Ambrose stuck his hand into a pocket and held up a small round object. "It's a button! I used the edge to scratch the surface of the stone." He ran his index finger along the outside of the button. "Ouch!" he cried as the edge, honed by the friction of writing, lightly sliced the pad of his finger.

"You all right?"

"Oh, just forgot it's a little sharp. Look, see how writing wore down the edge?"

Ambrose sucked the injured finger and tossed the button carefully across the space between their cells. It bounced with a tiny _tink_ sound. Charles picked up the button and dutifully inspected it. "Very resourceful, Ambrose. Well done."

"Thank you!" Ambrose knew that he had accomplished feats far more impressive back when he was fully himself, but Charles's acknowledgment of his ingenuity made him feel like the most brilliant man alive. He basked in this feeling for just a matter of seconds, however, before adopting a stern stance, wagging a finger at the other cell. "So, you see, things can always happen that surprise you. That's why we can't give up. You need to eat, Charles, you _have_ to, so you can keep up your strength."

Charles heaved a sigh. "I suppose you're right. I'm going to need all the energy I can get."

"That's the spirit!"

Reaching for the plate with his left hand, Charles pulled it closer to him and ran a finger through the goop. He put the finger into his mouth and shuddered. Ambrose laughed, not in meanness, but in expression of joy.

He couldn't remember feeling so full of hope. Ever since his brain had been stolen, Ambrose's life had been all about reacting to the actions of others and waiting to see what would be done to him next. He'd been like a dinghy on stormy seas, subject to the whims of the winds and waves. But then today, oh! Today, for the first time, he'd taken back just a tiny measure of control. It had been more than the simple act of writing his name on the wall; Ambrose had taken positive, independent action to confront a problem and overcome it. It was an exercise of personal power, no matter how small, and it had changed his entire outlook.

If it were still possible for him to act as well as react, then perhaps there were lots of other possibilities, as well. Survival… escape… finding the rest of his brain. Who knew just what was ultimately feasible? He and Charles would think of a way to live through this nightmare. Together, they would overcome the obstacles in their path to fight their way back to normal, meaningful lives.

He turned his attention back to his friend and was encouraged to see he had eaten almost half of the food in the dish. True, he looked faintly ill, but like Ambrose, Charles would get used to the awful taste in time.

"Good, Charles! That's good." As his companion pushed the dish away once more, Ambrose objected. "No, no – try to eat it all."

"Any more and I will vomit."

"Well… that _would_ be counterproductive. Just remember, though: they only feed us once a day."

"The first mercy I've encountered since I got here."

Ambrose laughed and watched Charles heft himself to a standing position. He moved stiffly, flexing his joints with painful care. Ambrose was suddenly aware of being much younger than Charles; although he couldn't remember his age, he knew that he was in his prime and that Charles was well past his.

A flash of insight told him that these harsh conditions were much harder on someone of Charles's age. Sleeping on a metal bench in a damp cell of cold stone; being actively battered and tortured; forced to eat disgusting, unhealthy food in unsanitary living conditions… These things were more easily endured by the young. Charles, on the other hand, was likely to decline rapidly.

That's when he noticed that Charles was still favoring his right arm. Abruptly, he realized that even hope had an expiration date.

"Charles!" he blurted.

The older man turned his head, bloodshot blue eyes alarmed. There were faint dark smudges beneath them. Had someone hit him? Oh right, that was probably from having his nose bloodied earlier. "What? What's wrong?"

The bars wouldn't let him get close enough. He needed to touch his friend, to be comforted by his solidity, but that was impossible, so Ambrose settled for grasping the flat bars hard enough to hurt his fingers and palms. He frowned. What had he been about to say? Charles's pallor and shadowed eyes provided a reminder. "We need a plan," he said urgently.

Charles merely stared. "A plan."

"Yes!" Releasing the bars, Ambrose began to pace. "Nothing too detailed; obviously, we have to stay flexible. But we need to rough out some kind of strategy now, before you…" He couldn't think of a way to finish the sentence without demoralizing Charles, so Ambrose let it hang and hoped he wouldn't notice.

Charles was shaking his head. "Ambrose," he began, and the tone of his voice told Ambrose everything he didn't want to hear, so he didn't listen.

"You're tired, I get that, I _do_. Tired and miserable and… and depressed. It's perfectly natural under the circumstances. But that's why we need the plan, you see? It'll give you hope, and that will give you something to, to focus on when things are at their worst. I never realized until just now how important it was to have that." He pondered. "At least, I don't _think_ I ever realized it before. Do you happen to know if I –"

"Ambrose," Charles said again, coming to the front of his cell and looking him steadily in the eyes, "listen to me. There may be hope in all of this, but escape is not part of it – not for me. I know that I will not leave this place alive –"

"That's not true!"

"– and it's important that _you_ accept that knowledge, too."

"I won't! There's no reason –"

"_Listen to me_."

"No! I won't listen when you're talking about giving up and –"

"I'm _not_ giving up, I'm being realistic. I'm too old for this. I know that, and they know it. They're _counting_ on it."

Ambrose felt like a panicked terrier, too stubborn and afraid to let go. "If you just had hope, it would give you the strength you need to get through it!" He looked inanely around the cell for something to use to transmit his own hope into Charles.

"But I do have hope," Charles said, his voice going quiet so suddenly that Ambrose momentarily feared his hearing was failing. "My hope keeps me focused on the bigger picture."

"Bigger picture?" What sort of nonsense was Charles spouting now? They were talking about losing the will to _stay alive_; how much bigger could the picture get?

Earnestly, Charles continued. "Yes. Actually, if it weren't for that, I'd probably be dead already. You see, when I'm being dragged to a room where I know I'm going to be interrogated and tortured, it's the bigger picture that keeps me from dropping to my knees and begging them not to hurt me. It's what stops me from telling them_ anything_ they want me to say just to make the pain end."

It was shocking to hear Charles, whose courage and poise Ambrose so admired, talk so matter-of-factly about capitulation and how close he felt to giving his. It didn't seem possible that someone with a whole brain, who knew everything one was _supposed_ to know about himself and the world, could give up so easily when Ambrose – at best, a hollow shell of a man – was prepared to survive even though he couldn't remember his own name without a cheat sheet.

"I don't understand!" he growled. "You're not making any sense. If you're too chicken to make plans for your escape, just say so. This 'bigger picture' nonsense just sounds like an excuse to me."

Charles looked to the floor in thought. Ambrose felt a small surge of encouragement. Perhaps he was reconsidering.

"It's not an excuse. I know you think I don't care about staying alive, and you're wrong about that. It's that there's so much more at stake than just _my_ life. Maybe I _could_ hang on longer if I made survival my priority, I don't know."

"Yes! Of course you could! That's what I'm –"

"But for _me_, hanging on longer means risking…"

He stopped himself from continuing – which of course made Ambrose insanely curious to know what he'd been about to say – and took a few steps away, running both hands through his thick, unkempt gray hair. Before Ambrose could ask the burning question, however, he was already resuming.

"The choices I make while I'm here have the power to affect the lives of scores of people outside this prison. Perhaps even hundreds of them. It's_ that_ I have to focus on, Ambrose. Compared to the survival of hundreds of people, of perhaps the kingdom itself, my life is insignificant."

Ambrose gaped, overwhelmed by the sudden awareness of a perspective that had honestly never occurred to him. Of course, when your entire remembered existence had been narrowed to include only a prison cell and a handful of people, it was easy to forget that there _were_ scores or hundreds or even thousands of other, unseen individuals out there in the world. It was easy to forget there even _was_ a world. Responsibility to society at large was something of a hypothetical notion under those circumstances.

"You see," Charles continued quietly, searching Ambrose's face for signs of understanding, "accepting that I'm already lost gives me leverage. There's no reason to think that they'll release me or reward me if I give them what they want. They will either kill me outright or do something worse."

Ambrose felt the impulse to reach for his zipper, but fought it. He couldn't afford distractions.

"So if I'm to end badly either way, I may as well try to ensure that I don't spread pain to anyone else."

Overloaded by intangibles like self-sacrifice for the greater good, Ambrose seized on something more accessible: the mechanics of the consequences. "Spread pain to others? How? How would you do that?"

Charles waved a hand, as though such details were unimportant. "Never mind. The point is that I don't draw my strength from fantasizing about survival and escape. Do you understand?"

Ambrose considered the question. "I think I do," he said. And then he drifted over to his bench and sat down, drawing his legs up onto it and folding one under him as he leaned against the wall.

He could feel Charles's gaze following him and lingering, but he didn't look up. He didn't say anything about the swirling sensation created in his stomach as hope drained away, or about the heat of shame burning beneath the skin of his face. He didn't say anything more at all.

"All right," Charles said finally. "I'm glad you understand." He sounded uncertain, as though he was puzzled by Ambrose's reaction, but thought it best to let the conversation end.

At that point, Ambrose stopped paying attention to Charles, or Charles's cell, or any of the noises that floated down the corridor from elsewhere in the prison. His world narrowed to the only spaces directly relevant to himself: the confines of his cell, and the unnatural amount of breathing room in his skull.

Until now, it hadn't occurred to him to wonder who he might have left behind when they had torn his brain apart. He'd never even thought about loved ones, whether he was married, if there was anyone out there who had depended on him – anyone who'd been counting on his strength to protect them.

If there had been, they probably weren't waiting anymore.

Nothing. This is what it all came down to. He had nothing in his head, nothing in his life, nothing waiting for him outside this cell. There was no logical reason to try to escape. There was nothing to escape to.

He stretched himself out to lie on his back, and his eyes landed on the words he'd so painstakingly scratched into the wall. The act that had ignited his ridiculous rhapsody of hope for the future.

"Fantasy," he whispered.


	4. Chapter 4 Jigsaw 1

_This chapter and the two which will follow are three parts of a single chunk of storyline. It was simply too insanely long to stuff it all into one chapter._

_As always, I invite you to thank and applaud my beta readers, Madigirl and Blackletter._

* * *

There was too much happening. _Way_ too much happening. 

Ambrose felt restless, kinetic, and a little panicky. He couldn't keep still, and there was nowhere to go, so he was continually bouncing off the boundaries of his cell.

Noise. Noise everywhere – outside, inside. His head was half-empty, but his brain was far too full. There wasn't enough room in the diminished organ for all that had happened… whatever it was. He couldn't recall the events, only the noise and emotions: anger, fear, screaming, vomiting, bleeding. Terror, pain, torment.

He couldn't stop pacing, couldn't stop trying to remember, and couldn't actually recall a single thing. It was an endless loop of fruitless, exhausting activity.

Control. He had to get control.

He willed himself to stop moving, an instruction that his feet resisted with some vigor, and looked rather wildly all around the cell for… something. He supposed he'd know what he was looking for when he saw… oh, wait. Those words on the wall. Someone had scratched…

Oh! _My name is Ambrose._ That rang a bell, rather loudly. Who had written that? As though it had a mind of its own, his right hand touched the cuff of his left coat sleeve. Looking down, he noted that a button was missing. This had some relationship to the writing, apparently, although he didn't know what it was. But somehow, he felt calmer now, more grounded.

Okay. So. Time to figure out what was happening. Or what had happened. Or maybe what was about to happen again.

Concentrating very hard, he tried to remember something. Anything would do, really, as a starting point. At least, that's what he thought until he was deluged by a rush of pictures, words, and sounds all jumbled together, chopped up into a sensory confetti and then mixed together like remnants of old jigsaw puzzles.

"_You've no idea what you're asking me to do." Family. Grandchildren. "Say 'ah'." Someone vomiting. Serious men; paper burning in the fireplace. "Rory." Rectangles and ovals. Laughter from a friend, but not the kind that made him want to join in. A vaporous snake. Archaeon. "I taught him to shoot." Carpet of blood. "She's done her bit. Leave her alone!" Charms. "There is no such thing as good anymore."_

It was overkill, like being tossed into a lake because you mentioned you were thirsty. He tried to make sense of the stuff, to find a way to organize it, but as fast as one item materialized, it was bumped away by the next.

He tried to focus on a single element of the mental parade, to grab onto it with both hands and will its context to reveal itself. But like a magnet chasing another of the same polarity, as soon as he concentrated on an image or sound, his very attention forced it from his grasp. On and on and on, the flood of meaningless remembrances raged through his brain. Whimpering, he slapped at his head until the flood dried up. He was panting and sweating, and his knees were locked. That was a good way to pass out, so he forced them to flex until the better idea of sitting down occurred to him.

Turning toward the bench again brought the words on the back wall into his sight. Abruptly, the name _Charles_ entered his mind, and this for some reason compelled him to turn his head toward the cell across from his. There was a man sleeping over there. Somehow, he knew that was Charles. Perhaps _he_ could help bring order to his _(Ambrose. My name is Ambrose) _confusion. He could wake him and…

No. No, he shouldn't do that, because Charles hadn't had much rest lately. And with that thought, he started to remember….

0o0o0

It had taken him a while to understand what he was hearing, because he was soundly sleeping when the incident began. There was a loud voice and sudden light, and by the time Ambrose fully woke and was able to assess what was going on, the door to Charles's cell had been opened and there were two long-coated men inside, hauling him off the bench. He had obviously been sleeping, too.

"I said, on your feet, Farsing!" bellowed one of the longcoats still standing outside the cell, aiming a lantern directly into Charles's face, which was battered-looking, with a nasty cut along the cheekbone just beginning to scab. Charles blinked and squinted and tried to raise a hand to block the glare. The longcoats flanking him were holding his arms and kept them at his sides.

"Lonot?" Charles rasped, his vocal cords not yet fully roused. "What's this about?"

"Why, it's about time for another talk."

"Delightful." The dry tone Charles affected was undermined by the slight tremor in his voice. "I suppose it couldn't wait until morning."

"Oh, I'm sure it could have, but under the circumstances, I assumed you'd want to be informed as soon as possible."

Charles frowned. "Informed of what?"

Lonot leaned forward. His back was to Ambrose's cell, but his ugly grin was evident in his voice. "Charles, it's my distinct pleasure to tell you that… we've finally found your family."

The astonishment on Charles's face melted into horror with shocking speed. "You've… no. No!"

"Bring him."

The longcoats began to force Charles to move forward, which he resisted. At a nod from Lonot, both men released him as Lonot shoved one of the electrified rods through the door and gave the prisoner a good, pain-filled zap. The longcoats grabbed Charles before he'd quite hit the floor and proceeded to drag him out.

"Why, Charles," Lonot said conversationally, "I'm surprised. I thought you'd be anxious to be reunited with your son."

0o0o0

The memory ended abruptly, like a projection device whose power source has been cut off. Ambrose sat up straighter. That wasn't enough. He was very confused; he hadn't known Charles had a family, much less that they were trying to hide. Or had he? There was something more hovering just at the edge of his grasp. Putting all his concentration into it, he tried to bring it into focus, but it kept skittering away.

He slumped in frustration. Why was everything so difficult today? Sure, remembering things was always hard for him, but it wasn't usually_ this_ bad. Huffing an irritated sigh, he laid back, feet on the bench and knees bent. There it was again: _My name is Ambrose_, scratched into the wall. Again, he looked at the cuff with the missing button. That was when another memory came forth, an earlier one…

0o0o0

"So how come it's just us?"

Charles, resting his head against folded arms that leaned against a horizontal bar of his door, must have been lost in his own thoughts, because Ambrose had to repeat the question to gain his attention.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Ambrose said, beginning to pace slowly back and forth at the front of his cell, "I was wondering, since Azkadellia has overthrown the rightful government, why you and I seem to be the only members of that government being held prisoner."

"What makes you think that we are?"

Ambrose blinked. "That we're prisoners? Well, there's the excellent food; the lavish accommodations; the courteous, efficient staff; oh yes, the security bars –"

Rubbing his forehead tiredly, Charles interrupted. "What makes you think we're the_only_ government members who are prisoners? Clearly, there are other sections of the prison being occupied." As he spoke, faint noises drifted down the corridor that indicated the presence of other, unseen captives.

Ambrose had to admit that was true. For all they knew, the whole of the Queen's cabinet could be housed here and they wouldn't ever lay eyes on them. This actually brought up another question, indirectly. "What happened to your uniform?"

"What?" Charles sounded irritated.

"Well, _I'm_ wearing my official uniform…" Noting the wrinkled, unclean state of said uniform, he added, "such as it is. But apparently, when they nabbed _you_, you were dressed like… like a civilian."

"So? Do you think I own no other clothing? What does it matter what I was wearing when they found me?"

"It doesn't, it just… I was just wondering what might have happened to the rest of us."

Stepping back from the bars, Charles snapped, "And how does my lack of a uniform relate to that?"

Ambrose started to answer, stopped, and cocked his head. "I'm not sure."

With a mild snort, Charles turned stiffly and limped to his bench. He'd had two additional interrogation sessions since that first one and each time he'd emerged with less mobility. Ambrose watched as he carefully lowered himself into a sitting position.

"Hey, why do they keep taking you for questioning? What exactly are they trying to find out?"

"I've repeatedly told you I won't discuss that, Ambrose."

"You have?"

But Charles was no longer talking. He lay on his back with his left arm flung over his eyes. Ambrose rolled his eyes and sighed. He still wanted to know what had happened to Charles's uniform. Or maybe what had happened to the rest of the cabinet. Oh, now he was all confused.

Suddenly, his mind was replaying images from that memory he kept calling up, the one where he was addressing a small group of other government types over a diagram. Everyone there wore a uniform exactly like Ambrose's… only clean, of course.

Somehow his brain drew a line between point A and point B without knowing where the points even were. He whirled toward the other cell. "They're in hiding, aren't they?"

Charles tensed but didn't uncover his eyes. "What? Who?"

Ambrose pressed himself against the barred door and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "The rest of the cabinet."

Moving deliberately but sounding impatient, Charles sat up. "If you must know, many cabinet members defected when it looked as though Azkadellia's coup might succeed. They traded their loyalty to the Queen for whatever reward the sorceress was willing to grant them for their treachery. And since you seem fixated on fashion, I suppose they are now wearing long leather coats, if she actually allowed them to live."

"Many, but not all?"

"What?"

"You said many of them defected. But not all of them, right? I didn't, you didn't."

"Well done. Excellent grasp of the obvious."

"So if you and I resisted, it seems reasonable that at least a few others did, too. Right?"

"What is your point, please?"

"Um…" Ambrose had actually forgotten his point, so he thought up a new question. "Why didn't you defect?"

The blue eyes in the other cell were suddenly alight with indignation. "How can you even ask me such a thing?"

"I'm just curious."

"Why didn't _you?_"

Now Ambrose was impatient. "I don't _know!_ Half a brain and no memories, remember? Guess not _everyone_ has a grasp of the obvious."

Unexpectedly, Charles laughed. It wasn't much of a laugh, but Ambrose felt better for hearing it and smiled tentatively. There was silence for a while, but it was companionable, comfortable.

"You didn't defect," Charles told him, and this time there was warmth in his voice, "because you are loyal to the bone. You were prepared to lay down your life for the Queen and everything she stood for, and you stayed at her side right to the end, even when you knew that defeat was certain. That's why you're still in uniform, Ambrose. You were captured while performing your official duties."

Ambrose drank in the words like wine, allowing the implied praise of his character to intoxicate him a little. But still, there were questions.

"But you weren't. Performing official duties when you were captured, I mean."

"No."

0o0o0

Ambrose groaned. While it was nice to have the memories flowing a bit, was it too much to ask for them to answer more questions than they raised?

He looked over at Charles again. Still asleep. "Too bad," Ambrose murmured. "I mean, good for him, of course. But too bad for me."

Idly, he wondered if Charles had always been so infuriatingly circumspect, or if there had been a time when he had answered questions directly and without hesitation. Perhaps it was a function of his age; maybe people became more enigmatic with the passing of the annuals.

Or maybe Charles was just a natural hoarder of information. But no, Ambrose had a feeling that wasn't it, either. In fact, his gut told him that Charles was keeping his cards close to the vest out of some sort of duty, and Ambrose could respect that. Still, couldn't he just let go once in a while and share a little?

_Had_ he…?

0o0o0

For the first time, Charles was unable to return from an interrogation under his own power.

The two longcoats who brought him back had to carry him, each carelessly gripping one of his wrists over their shoulders, allowing his body to sag between them – and his legs to drag along the stone floor from the knees down.

They tossed him into the cell in a heap.

"Impressive," Ambrose sneered. "I'll bet that's a great boost to your ego, tossing a beaten-up old man around like a bag of dirty laundry. Your masculinity must feel so enhanced right now."

One of the longcoats reached through the bars and yanked front of Ambrose's coat, slamming him face-first into the cold iron. He grabbed the tab of Ambrose's zipper and ripped it open. Ambrose gasped as cold air entered his skull.

"You like that feeling, headcase?" snarled the man. His grip on the coat hadn't loosened, and Ambrose was awkwardly smashed against the cell door, head turned to the side and immobilized.

"N-no, I don't like it," he stammered. What if the vicious ape reached inside? What if he were to _touch his brain?_

"Then you watch that mouth of yours," the ape responded. "Because the only thing keepin' your head closed is this zipper, and that –" And here he tugged roughly on the front part of the zipper that attached to the forehead. "– can be ripped right off, easy. We understand each other?"

"Y-yes!"

Ambrose staggered backward as the longcoat gave him a hard shove. He hit the floor, undamaged but shaken, and listened to the laughter as the long-coated thugs headed down the corridor. His hands flew up to inspect the zipper, certain that it had been damaged. But it turned out to be fine, if a little sore along the seams, and he quickly closed it up.

"I thought… told you… stay out of it."

Ambrose scooted closer to the bars and watched as Charles's body stirred weakly. "I thought you were unconscious."

"No… such luck." Charles turned onto his side, drew his knees up toward his chest, and began to cough. Blood dotted his lips and the floor near them. His face was bruised and one of his eyes was swelling shut.

Ambrose got to his knees, alarmed. "Can you get up? Maybe get onto the bench?"

Charles made a terrifying, wheezy sound. Ambrose panicked until he realized it was laughter. His heart sank. It was the first time Charles's laughter had chilled rather than comforted him.

"Don't think a… few feet of altitude will help."

The coughing started up again. To Ambrose, it sounded like internal organs slapping against the rib cage and each other. At this rate, Charles wouldn't survive half an hour of the next interrogation. Even so, he wouldn't be granted an easy death. They would see to it that he went out screaming. The thought filled Ambrose with stark terror.

Clutching the bars with his hands, Ambrose took a deep breath. "Charles? Charles… please talk."

Charles's chest heaved in deep, labored gasps as the coughing subsided. "Not now… Ambrose. Busy… breathing."

"No, that's not what…" Ambrose cleared his throat. "Charles, listen. The next time they take you away… tell them. Tell them everything. Whatever they want to know, give it to them."

"Stop."

"No, _you_ stop. You've done your part. Seriously, Charles, you need to give in now."

"You've no idea… what you're asking me to do."

"Yes, I do."

"No."

"I'm asking you to stop protecting –"

"Stop it."

"– all these other people. Do what you need to do for _yourself_ now."

"Already doing it."

"No!" Ambrose kicked the door of his cell. "What you're doing is letting them kill you an inch at a time out of a perceived obligation to some mysterious people out there! You've kept the faith, okay? Those, those nameless, faceless people don't know what you're going through in here. They don't even know you exist!"

"Shut up!" Charles struggled to lift his upper body, propping himself precariously on an elbow. The tone of his voice was angry, but Ambrose was surprised that Charles's eyes were wide and tinged with panic. "_Shut up! _You mustn't do this to me, Ambrose! Tempt me. You don't…" His brief surge of energy ended and Charles let himself sink back to the floor. "You don't know what you're asking."

Ambrose had the feeling he was missing something. "But –"

"They're not all… nameless and faceless," Charles said weakly. Ambrose waited for more, but soon realized that his friend had passed out.

0o0o0

Ambrose surged to his feet as the memory faded, again filled with that feeling of panic and restlessness. He had a bizarre, intense urge to flee, which was both perplexing and unfortunate, given that he was locked in a cell. His chest churned cold air into his lungs with harsh urgency. This was silly – there was no immediate threat, no justification for the anxiety he was feeling.

Was there?

He spun around, sure that disaster lurked just behind him. Nothing. He strained his ears for signs that longcoats were descending, but all he could hear was the normal background noise of distant cruelty and suffering. Even Charles still slept.

Putting his hands to his face, he scrubbed up and down, trying to quell this attack of nerves with physical stimulation. He had to put a stop to this, because there was something important he had to do.

Something important he needed to _remember_.

He plopped himself down on the bench again, scowling. Well, if the outcome of the game was dependent on his memory, it was probably time to forfeit, because he… Wait. Game. Something about a game…

0o0o0

Staring at the floor just outside Charles's cell, Ambrose analyzed the numbers and position of the circles, triangles, and diamonds contained in the crudely drawn grid.

"What did you say this game is called, again?"

"Charms," Charles said briskly. "Do you like it?"

"It's a little simplistic," Ambrose said automatically, and then felt embarrassed by his lack of tact. "But I'm enjoying it."

Charles chuckled. The swelling in his face was going down; the right eye was able to open a little now. "It's actually a child's game. But given our options, it's the only choice." He held up the button Ambrose had tossed into his cell a few days earlier.

"It's fine." Ambrose smiled brightly. It didn't matter how easy the game was. The real fun was in seeing Charles so cheerful and relaxed. They'd left him alone for three straight days now, and while his movements were stiff and careful and he still had the occasional coughing fit, the older man was doing much better.

Looking back to the grid scratched into the floor, Ambrose said, "Diamond, fourth row, third square from the right."

Charles dutifully scratched out a diamond shape in the specified square on the grid and looked thoughtful, considering his next move.

"So how many years has it been since you've played this game?" Ambrose asked.

"I last played about eight months ago."

Ambrose frowned. "But if it's a game for kids…"

Scratching a triangle into the leftmost square in the third row, Charles said, "I was teaching it to my grandson. He's seven annuals old. Was at the time, that is."

A kind of joy seemed to flow into Ambrose and travel through his veins all over his body. Although he owed nearly everything he knew about himself to this man, this was perhaps the first time Charles had shared anything substantive about his own life. "Grandson? Family! You have a family!"

Charles smiled. "Yes. Two grandchildren, one son."

"Wife?"

"She passed several years ago."

"I'm so sorry." Feeling awkward about reminding Charles of his loss, he hurriedly chose a move. "Sixth row, seven from the left." As Charles drew the diamond, Ambrose said, "So, your family. Tell me about them."

"Well, let's see. Logan, my son, was curator of the Magic History wing at the Museum of the Outer Zone in Central City."

"Was?"

"When the coup looked to be succeeding, he left his position. Anyway, he's married to a lovely woman, Melany, and they have two children: Anthea, who's eleven, and the boy I already mentioned, Roderick."

"Rory," Ambrose supplied without thinking.

Charles stopped in the middle of drawing a triangle and looked sharply at him. "What? Do you… How did you know that?"

"Know what?" Had he done something wrong? Ambrose feared ruining this lovely afternoon terribly.

"That we call him Rory. Did you remember it?"

"Remember it? Have I met him?"

"You've met all of them."

Ambrose allowed himself a second to feel gratified; it pleased him immensely to learn that he'd once been included, to at least some degree, in his friend's private life.

"Ambrose, this is very important. Did that name come from your memory?"

He thought hard, feeling inexplicably ashamed. Charles seemed so… threatened.

Nothing was forthcoming. If the name had come from a memory, that memory had gone back into hiding. "Isn't 'Rory' a traditional nickname for 'Roderick'?"

Charles studied him for a moment before nodding absently. "Yes. Yes, it is." He slowly resumed drawing the triangle.

Charles became preoccupied, and Ambrose felt a selfish sting of loss. They had been having such a good time. Ambrose watched his friend carefully while continuing to call out his moves. Charles appeared to be putting less thought into his.

"I… think I won," Ambrose said eventually.

"Hmm?"

"Row six? I took the row." As Charles stared down at the row with a puzzled frown, he added uncertainly, "You did say that the squares with circles go to the player whose symbols surround them, didn't you?"

"Ah! Indeed I did. Well done." Charles smiled at him and drew a careful line through the row in question. He looked down at the button in his hand.

"Boy, bet that thing's flat on one side by now," Ambrose said. Charles held it up for him to see. "Yep. Sharp, too, probably. Be careful you don't cut your fingers."

Charles raised his eyes to look at Ambrose, cocking his head and smiling. "Trying to protect me?"

"Well, sure."

"You care about me, don't you, Ambrose?"

Feeling suddenly awkward, Ambrose shifted uncomfortably. "Of course."

"Am I the only person you care about, other than yourself?"

"Well… you're really the only person I know. Since they took… you know."

Charles nodded. "Exactly. I'm the only person you know. You care about me and want to protect me." He leaned forward. "So extrapolate from that and imagine that you have several friends like me. How would you feel about them being in danger?"

"I… wouldn't like that." Ambrose was not at all sure where this was going.

"You'd want to protect them, too, wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

Charles nodded again, thoughtfully, and was quiet for a short time. "Do you remember what I told you about the circumstances of your capture?"

"You mean, that I stayed with the Queen?"

"Yes. You stayed at your post no matter what, even when it was clear that Azkadellia would soon take over."

Ambrose leaned against the bars and considered things. "So you're saying I stayed with the Queen because I cared about her."

"Yes, but more than that, you cared about the kingdom, about keeping it safe. You cared about an ideal, and about masses of people you had never even met."

"Oh, I get it now," Ambrose said, rolling his eyes. "You're trying to justify your self-destructive resistance by suggesting that I would do the same thing in your position."

Charles seemed taken aback, as though Ambrose had skipped ahead in the lesson. "Well, yes. You would, you know. If you could remember the things that I know about you, you'd understand completely."

Ambrose shrugged. It was no fair, Charles using things he couldn't recall to bolster his argument. "Let me ask you something, Charles. Do _you_ care about _me?_"

Again, Charles seemed to have been taken by surprise. "Yes, of course."

"And you don't like me trying to defend you from the longcoats because I just get hurt, right?"

"Right."

Ambrose hopped to his feet. "Then maybe you can understand what it does to me to see you come back from each session a little more dead than when you left." He walked to the bench and plopped onto it like a sulky teenager.

Charles was looking at him with something like sympathy. "I do understand it. I would feel the same if it were you they were torturing. But I would also understand what cause you were serving by refusing to cooperate with them. I'd understand the big—"

"The bigger picture, right, I remember."

"All right, let me put it another way. Suppose they were torturing _you_ for information that would get _me_ into trouble. What if you knew something that, if you told them, would lead them to torture me, maybe even kill me?"

He was prepared to scoff at the transparent scenario, but he found himself envisioning it for a moment. He imagined all the horrible things that had been done to Charles happening to him, instead, and felt the weight of responsibility that would put him between this tremendous suffering and his friend. Ambrose wasn't at all sure he would possess the necessary strength to keep quiet and spare Charles that horrible fate… but he knew he would want to try.

The realization must have shown on his face, because Charles was saying, "You see, there are ideals that are worth suffering for, Ambrose. People who are worth dying for. And sometimes, we have to make terrible decisions in order to protect them."

And then the simple truth hit him like a palm to his forehead. Charles was right. He could feel in his heart, in his bones, in his very _soul_ that he would be willing to die for Charles. He still wasn't sure he had the fortitude to follow through – if he was tormented enough, he suspected he would cave – but yes, he would definitely resist until he reached that breaking point.

Breaking point. Why couldn't Charles be weak like him? Why did his will have to be so tough? If he would only break…

"I understand," he said, feeling faintly ill even as Charles smiled.

It was a feeling that persisted until he went to sleep that night, listening to the occasional coughing and quiet grunts as Charles struggled to find a comfortable position on the bench.

It was a feeling that was replaced by utter horror when the longcoats came for Charles not long after, only to discover the cell floor bathed in blood from Charles having sliced his wrists.


	5. Chapter 5 Jigsaw 2

_This chapter is the second of three that comprise a single chunk of storyline. 'Twas simply too long for one or two chapters._

_Thanks as always to my wonderful and lovely betas, Madigirl and Blackletter._

* * *

Ambrose jerked to his feet, misplacing one of them and falling off the bench to the floor, crushing his knee against stone. 

"No!" he cried, curling up and beating his head with his fists, as though he could beat the memory out of it. He kept on saying it, denying what he'd recalled, and rejecting any further remembrances. He didn't want to know any more. He couldn't accept what he'd already seen. _Charles! _A _suicide!_

Charles. The bastard_ had_ broken, after all – only he'd still managed to find a way to resist, even in breaking.

And he'd made Ambrose an accomplice by using the button.

He began to weep, even as another memory invaded his consciousness…

0o0o0

It should have been pandemonium, but the one called Lonot kept his head. He rushed into the cell, his boots making slapping sounds in the shallow pools of blood. Ambrose felt his stomach lurch.

"He has a faint pulse!" Lonot shouted.

"So what?" demanded one of his men. "He can't last long. He's lost too much blood, and it's still coming."

Lonot ripped part of Charles's shirt and began making a tourniquet. "Go get that thing we brought in last week."

"The viewer?"

"Yeah. I hear they have healing abilities. Go now!"

Two of the men obeyed, running off into the darkened corridor. The remaining man, the one who'd spoken, folded his arms. "You really wanna piss off the alchemist? You know Azkadellia's had him running experiments on that thing. He's using it to develop a machine so we can use 'em to question –"

"I know what he's working on!" Lonot barked, tearing off more of Charles's shirt for the other arm. "He already has another viewer he can use for that."

"He seems to go through 'em pretty quickly," smirked the other man. "Besides, he uses that one to work with the headcase's brain."

"There're other viewers out there; I'll send a team out today to find more. _This_ is the only prisoner we have with the knowledge we require. It doesn't take a whole brain to know where the priority lies."

Ignoring the slur, Ambrose stood at his door, clutching the bars, and tried to concentrate on Charles. He could see half his face – visible eye closed, skin deadly pale in the lantern light, and features utterly motionless, like the rest of his body. He tried very hard to ignore the liquid red carpet that covered most of the cell floor and was slowly spreading. Already, it had obliterated most of their Charms game grid.

Clamping down on nausea, Ambrose struggled to sort through his feelings. What was he supposed to hope for? Recovery? That would mean wishing for more torture for Charles, and more risk of him betraying those he desperately wanted to protect. But how could he hope for his friend to die – even if it meant release from torment and from a responsibility greater than any man should have to bear?

He wondered if Charles had given any thought to how Ambrose would feel as he witnessed this gory aftermath. Probably, he had. Charles wasn't a cruel or thoughtless man. He was simply focused on the bigger picture.

"General!" called a voice from the dark hallway. The two longcoats had returned, between them pulling a smaller figure that didn't seem to want to come along. "We got it!"

"In here! Hurry!"

The men easily wrestled the small creature into the cell. Ambrose stared at it curiously. The viewer was young and female. She had a long mane, but it was thinner than those of the males and didn't puff out as much, and her chin lacked whiskers. Her crude clothing was torn and her feet bare. He didn't think that was the norm, but he wasn't sure. Viewers were pastoral creatures, and he'd spent most of his life in the city and at court. He'd seen viewers on occasion, but usually from a distance when staying in the country.

Hey. He'd just had a genuine unprompted memory.

"Get over here!" Lonot barked at the viewer, tugging her arm roughly. "Heal this man. Now!"

The viewer recoiled as she took in the grisly scene, gagging when she realized she was standing barefoot in human blood. Lonot slapped her, hard. "I gave you an order."

Her jaw worked several times before speech was produced. "I… I ca… I don't know if…"

Lonot grabbed one of the electric rods from another longcoat. He started to extend it toward her until he realized he was standing in pooled blood. Quickly scanning the wall, he found an uneven stone to use as a handhold and stood on another one about a foot from the floor before zapping the viewer, good and long. She shrieked and jerked, falling backward with a small splash.

"Do it!"

Clearly fighting not to vomit, the viewer scrambled to Charles's side and inspected the damage. She removed one tourniquet and clasped her small hands around his wrist.

Ambrose couldn't see her face or what she was doing, but after a minute or so, she released the wrist and reached with shaking hands for the other tourniquet. She held the other wrist for a while. When she finished, she scuttled away, remaining in a deferential, fearful crouch. Ambrose could see that the blood had stopped flowing, but that could simply mean that Charles had finally run dry.

Lonot dropped back to the floor and crossed to Charles, lifting one of his wrists. It was no longer cut; there was a scar, but even that seemed to be fading.

"Amazing," Ambrose whispered.

Apparently, Lonot was less impressed. "Well? What are you waiting for? Finish healing him!"

"H-he _is_ h-h-healed." The young viewer trembled so hard she could scarcely speak.

"His _cuts_ are healed. _He_ is still dying. Finish. The job!"

The viewer's eyes widened as she looked from her tormenter to Charles to the floor. Ambrose knew what she was thinking before she said it.

"But he is… too far… too much blood."

"You can do it. It's not impossible."

"But I… I would… you cannot ask –"

He was upon her before she could finish. Seizing her small neck in his massive hand, he yanked her backward brutally, forcing her to look into his looming face.

"I am _asking_ for nothing." He now forced her face in the opposite direction until the tip of her nose was nearly in the puddle. "I'm_ commanding_ you to make this man well. Do you understand?"

Breath hitching, the viewer began to retch. Lonot let her up and thrust her toward the bench. Openly sobbing, she balanced herself on her knees and laid hands on the still-unconscious Charles. She was nearly hysterical from the rough treatment and the blood; Ambrose doubted she could heal even a hangnail in such a state.

_All that blood!_ His stomach lurched again, and again he mastered the nausea.

One hand on Charles's heart, one on his forehead, the viewer began to calm her breathing. Ambrose was impressed. She had far more maturity and self-possession than he'd credited her for.

After a minute, she gasped and her head fell back as though from a slap. The viewer groaned, her head making a circuit until it dropped toward her chest. With a series of sharp exhalations, she leaned forward. A great battle was raging unseen, with only her outward physical responses to give account.

Nevertheless, he didn't believe anything would come of her efforts until he actually saw color slowly returning to Charles's face several minutes later. Another minute or two and his chest began to move as his breathing became deeper. Finally, his eyes opened and he was coughing. Regardless the circumstances, no matter the consequences, Ambrose couldn't prevent a thrill of gratitude.

The viewer slumped, resting the side of her head against the bench. Ambrose wondered if viewers had names. They wore clothing; it seemed likely they would give themselves names.

Lonot shocked him by savagely kicking the viewer in the hindquarters. "Get up! Your job isn't done yet."

She looked up at him with difficulty, obviously severely weakened. "But… he lives."

"Yes, he's _alive_. I told you to make him _well_. He is coughing and weak. I want him healthy!"

She merely stared at him, unable to believe that her efforts had not been satisfactory.

"You heard me. Get back to work! I want him perfectly functional."

"Oh, come on!" Ambrose heard the words and thought them suicidal right up until he realized they were his. "He's alive! He's breathing! She's done her bit. Leave her alone."

It was perhaps a measure of his insignificance that Lonot didn't deign to acknowledge him, but instead gave the smallest of nods, at which one of the longcoats came toward him and thrust a rod through the barred door. Ambrose felt the charge as the rod dug into his body, and suddenly he was slamming against the back corner of his cell.

He didn't lose consciousness, but by the time he was on his feet again, the viewer was back at the bench.

Charles was awake but confused. He'd expected to be dead by now, of course, and that would throw anyone. But he seemed to realize that something was happening that he didn't want and was trying to reject the viewer's ministrations.

Lonot bent over and backhanded him. The viewer – Ambrose really wished he knew her name – recoiled from her attempt to fully heal Charles.

Ambrose approached the bars cautiously, wary of being zapped again. He had to see this through.

Charles was now conscious enough to actively struggle. Ambrose wondered if he understood what was going on or was simply resisting out of habit. Lonot held him down against the bench, his bald head gleaming with sweat, and tossed threats at the viewer over his shoulder.

Resignedly, she shuffled along on her knees and placed her hands on Charles. She jerked and gasped, and Ambrose couldn't help noticing that Charles's struggles became steadily more energetic.

Finally, the viewer seemed to wilt, collapsing against the bench and wall. Lonot straightened, and Charles bolted upright, looking equal parts furious and frantic.

"Welcome back, Farsing," Lonot sneered. "You've put us to a lot of trouble tonight, but I think we can find a way to pay it back."

Charles said nothing, breathing heavily, but Ambrose thought he looked better – healthier – than he had since he'd first arrived. He tried to watch Lonot but was finding the viewer very distracting. Ambrose wondered if it was his first time up close and personal with one, too.

Lonot reached out, bullet-fast, and grabbed Charles's right hand, snapping the first two fingers. The older man howled. For the third time this night, Ambrose was obliged to fight off sickness.

Lonot grabbed the viewer by an arm. "Heal the fingers."

Ambrose wasn't particularly adept at reading the facial expressions of other species, but exhaustion and hopelessness seemed to be universal. Charles was on his knees now, trying to cradle his injured hand, but Lonot took his wrist and shoved the fingers within reach of the viewer. Charles gasped and cried out when she held them. In very little time, she let him go and again fell back against the wall.

Charles stared at his hand in wonder, flexing the now-healthy digits experimentally. Turning toward the depleted viewer, he started to speak to her.

"Oh no," Lonot growled, hauling Charles to his feet, "no time for socializing, my_friend_." He slammed Charles's face against the wall.

Blood spattered the dirty stone and ran through Charles's fingers as he cupped his hands over the broken nose and fell to his knees. Lonot again reached for the viewer, ignoring her feeble whimpering.

"Fix his nose," he commanded. Charles tried to move away as his tormenter reached for him, but Lonot easily pinned him on his back next to the exhausted creature and forced his wrists to the floor. "The nose! Heal it!"

Ambrose was amazed that she still had enough energy left to move, much less heal. When the job was done, she simply laid down on the floor next to Charles.

Charles wasn't there for long, because Lonot was again wrestling him to his feet, their faces an inch apart.

"I know what you thought," he snarled. He shoved Charles away, catching him as he bounced off the bars and shoving him back into them. "You thought you could win. Didn't you? You thought you could escape into death and cheat me of my reward for extracting your secrets."

Lonot delivered a ferocious punch to his prisoner's jaw, lifting him back up when he sprawled on the floor. "Well, Charles, you may as well get something clear. You. Cannot. Win. I _will_ break you, I_ will_ take what you're trying to conceal. Then, and only then, will you be allowed to die."

Another vicious punch served to punctuate this pronouncement. This time, Ambrose clearly heard the jawbone give. He pressed his forehead against the cold bars of his cell to ease the latest urge to vomit.

Charles was holding his face and moaning. Lonot left him lying on the floor and dragged the viewer to him. She seemed almost boneless, offering neither resistance nor assistance. Lonot slapped her face a few times in an effort to rouse her enough to do his bidding. "Jaw. Heal it."

She was so weak he had to press her hand against Charles's face for her. She raised her head slightly, never opening her eyes, and went very still. This time, when she finished, her head just dropped, with an audible thump, to the floor.

For a time, there was comparative silence, broken only by the sound of Charles breathing hard in the wake of his succession of violent injuries and the horror of Lonot draining the viewer of her strength to cure them.

Lonot felt for a pulse. Smiling coldly at Charles, he said, "You see how it is. You tried to end _your_ life; I supplied a substitute. This creature died in your place, while you are now perfectly healthy and able to withstand even more punishment." He stood up, looming over the older man still sitting on the bloody floor. "I think a man of your intelligence can understand the concept of futility."

Lonot walked toward the door, addressing his men. "Find what he used to cut himself, dispose of that thing, and hose down him and this cell."

Ambrose kept his eyes on Charles, but he only kept sitting on the floor, staring at his own blood.

Retreating to a corner of his cell, Ambrose dropped to his knees and emptied his stomach.

0o0o0

As his mind returned to the present, Ambrose felt fresh tears flowing. He supposed that was illogical, given that he now knew Charles's suicide attempt had failed. He was cold, lying as he was on the floor, so he heaved himself into a sitting position and wiped his face with a sleeve, trying to regulate his breathing that still wanted to stutter and hiccup a little.

He kept his eyes downcast, a fact he didn't notice for a while. Once he did, Ambrose also realized that his urgent desire to wake Charles had passed. Many things seemed to have changed in the wake of that highly unpleasant memory.

Honestly, this remembering? Not _at all_ what it was cracked up to be.

He hoisted himself to stand and was surprised by the instability of his knees. His entire skeleton seemed to be humming like a tuning fork. A good round of pacing would probably cure it, he thought, so he started to make the rounds of the tiny cell.

First toward the back_ (My name is Ambrose)_, then toward the corner. Oops, dried vomit. Toward the front, careful to avoid waking Charles – or was it, to avoid looking at him? –then along the bars. Then on to –

His foot kicked something that scraped along the floor. The noise seemed obscenely loud. It made his breath come more harshly and his heart began to quicken. Ambrose looked down at the object.

There sat his dish, full of untouched food.

It didn't make sense.

Ambrose never failed to eat, no matter how vile the offering. It was important to keep up his strength.

Maybe… maybe they had delivered the food while he was in the grip of his memories. Perhaps he simply hadn't noticed them.

But no. Not only was it impossible to imagine overlooking the taunts and petty abuses of the guards, this food had been sitting here for a long time. Long enough to congeal. Bending down, he sniffed. Whew! Long enough to go bad, if you accepted its original condition as being "good."

Straightening, he experienced a long moment of total indecisiveness. He thought he should continue the pacing, but his legs felt like gelatin. He considered waking Charles, but something in him just screamed negative about the idea. He could feel a horror on the horizon, something dark and shattering, and he wanted desperately to avoid it. What could it be? How could anything be worse than the hideous events he had just recalled?

_Don't ask that._

The admonition rang in his head loud and clear, and he was suddenly shaking all over. It got more violent as it persisted, and he lunged toward the bench to sit before he simply couldn't stand anymore. His breath was coming in ragged gulps now, against all known reason, and he was starting to feel dizzy. The reason for the dizziness became clear when he realized that he was whipping his head from side to side in the world's most extreme physical expression of denial. Something was coming, the final piece of the puzzle, and he emphatically, passionately… feared it.

_No! I don't want to. Don't make me._

But even as he pressed his hands to his head, he knew that it was useless. It was coming anyway…

0o0o0

He'd tried to rest a little after they took Charles away, but it was impossible. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard Lonot's malicious enjoyment as he said, "We've finally found your family." He recalled the horror in Charles's eyes as his worst fear was realized.

Ambrose knew it was all over now. All Charles's courage, all his defiance had ultimately been for nothing. They had his family, the people he'd most wanted to protect, and so they now had Charles. After all the long days of imprisonment, of beatings and subjugations and cruel torments, they finally had him.

He wondered what would happen now. Would they kill him immediately once they got the information they were after, or would they bring him back here to wallow in his despair and shame for a while first? Ambrose certainly wanted to see Charles again, but witnessing his broken spirit was another matter.

The question was answered when Charles was escorted back by two longcoats, apparently without injury. Ambrose's first thought was,_ My gods! They shrank him!_, because he seemed somehow diminished.

Charles shuffled into the cell like an automaton. That there was no gratuitous shove or other parting rough treatment was surprising to Ambrose; he couldn't remember a single time that hadn't happened. Instead, the longcoats kept silent as the cell door was closed and locked, regarding Charles with what seemed like uneasy curiosity, as though they'd discovered he was something other than human.

For a moment, Charles just stood in the middle of the cell as though awaiting some signal for how to proceed. Then he walked slowly to the bench and sat down, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor a few feet in front of him.

The longcoats left and Ambrose came to the front of his cell. Charles's demeanor was unnerving. "Charles?"

There was no response at all. Charles continued to sit quietly and stare at nothing.

"Charles? What happened? Can you hear me?"

The staring blue eyes slowly lifted to meet Ambrose's. The impact was immediate; Ambrose found himself taking a step back. He'd expected, from Charles's behavior, that his eyes would be rather vacant and lost. Instead, they were… full. Full of anger and pain and self-loathing and the crushing weight of unforgiving responsibility. They were the eyes of a man who had gazed upon unvarnished evil for long enough to be willing to _fight_ it with evil, and knew that made him a monster himself.

When Ambrose spoke again, it was from a throat suddenly gone dry. "What? What happened?"

Charles shook his head slightly. "I did the right thing." His voice was thin and weirdly inflectionless.

"Oh. Well… that's good. Isn't it?"

Charles looked him in the eye again; Ambrose felt desperate to look away but didn't.

"There is no such thing as… good… anymore."

"Oh," Ambrose said. He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he sat down on his bench.

The two of them remained like that, Charles utterly motionless, until footsteps rang through the corridor. Ambrose watched the hall with dread as he waited for the longcoats to appear. This was it. This was the end of his friend.

In the shock of his recently begun life, Ambrose discovered that he'd been dreading the wrong thing.

The first person to appear in the cell block was a woman. She wasn't particularly tall, but she didn't need to be. The very stone in the walls and floors thrummed with evil in her presence. Her taste in fashion might, on another woman, be taken as a bad joke about fetish-wear. On this woman, it was to be taken seriously.

Everything about this woman had best be taken seriously.

"Azkadellia," breathed Ambrose almost silently, although he had never met her before. At least, not that he could remember.

Behind her walked Lonot, hands clasped behind him and head held high, but oddly subdued. Behind him, two more of his henchmen, including the one who'd unzipped Ambrose's head the other day. This time, no one spared the half-brained prisoner a second glance.

Azkadellia stopped before Charles's cell and folded her arms imperiously. "Charles, Charles," she said in a deceptively girlish, hurt tone. "I just don't _understand_. Lonot tells me that you just refused_ again_ to tell him what I need to know. He says that he went to all the trouble to locate your son and bring him here to see you, and instead of cooperating to save him, you let him _die_."

With a gesture, she ordered the cell unlocked and stepped inside. She walked the floor with a theatrical air, her voice climbing and dropping dramatically.

"I can only imagine how you felt, Charles, seeing poor Logan chained up like an animal. It must have been terrible to watch him suffer so. Flaying is such a gruesome, excruciating death. Especially when it's slow."

Ambrose realized he'd been holding his breath and exhaled, then found it was hard to breathe at all. His face felt hot and his lips were tingling. _Flaying?_ She was saying Charles had watched them do _that_ to his son?

"I'm curious about what went through your mind," the sorceress continued, idly stroking the hair of the still motionless prisoner who barely acknowledged her. "When they first started removing his skin, did you think, 'This is all very awful, but I love my secrets more than my son'? Or did you think someone would charge in and rescue you two?"

She stopped and bent low, putting her lips near his ear. "Or maybe you thought the general here was bluffing. Maybe you thought he couldn't actually bring himself to… _rip_ the flesh from Logan's body until his screamed himself mute. You may have thought Lonot wouldn't have the stomach for such torments." Azkadellia tossed a contemptuous glance at her general, and Ambrose saw his entire head go red with humiliation.

A bitter grimace tweaked the corners of Charles's mouth. "No," he said softly, his voice coming from far away. "I knew he had the stomach for it."

Azkadellia chuckled, a musical sound that grated like sandpaper against brick. "That's right, I forgot about the incident with my viewer." Her words took on sharpness as she again looked at Lonot, this time with visible anger. "He destroyed a valuable resource yesterday just to teach you a lesson. And now I see it was all a waste, because – honestly, Charles, my dear – you are _quite_ the _iceberg_."

Incredibly, she sat beside Charles on the bench, speaking conversationally. "Beatings, tortures, being dragged back to life after suicide – none of that fazed _you_. Even watching your son slowly stripped of his flesh and begging for death didn't crack your resolve, did it?"

Every eye was on Charles as she waited for him to acknowledge that he'd allowed his son to suffer unimaginably rather than give in. "You'd have killed him anyway," he finally responded, still in that quiet, detached voice that was so unlike him.

"Well, of course, but it wouldn't have been like _that_. Believe me, all deaths are not equal. Which is something you'll understand better when I tell you what I'm going to do with you."

She patted his knee affectionately before standing up. Her voice became commanding and harsh. "Your refusal to be sensible – and Lonot's incompetence in persuading you – has left me no choice. As soon as the alchemist is prepared, you'll be taken for criminal extraction. Since you've proven to be more stubborn than smart, I doubt losing most of your brain will make an appreciable difference in your quality of life."

Azkadellia spun dramatically and exited the cell. One of the longcoats closed the door as she strode down the corridor without even a glance at Lonot. Accepting the castigation with stoic dignity, the general sent his men with her before turning toward Charles, gazing at him appraisingly.

"I have to say, Charles – I didn't think you had it in you. I don't think I've ever underestimated anyone quite as badly as I have you. Quite a fool you've made of me."

There was respect in his tone, which Ambrose immediately found suspicious. There was another shoe about to drop, he was sure of it.

Lonot moved even closer to Charles's cell, putting a hand on the bars. "I was foolish not to have been more careful in handling Logan, too. I should have realized his first priority would be to tell you that the wife and children had eluded my men. That's what gave you the strength to endure it, wasn't it? That tenuous bit of hope?"

Charles said nothing, but he looked at Lonot then, and Ambrose was gratified to see just the tiniest speck of triumph in his eyes. It was the first sign that anything of Charles's essence had survived.

The general nodded and put his other hand on the bars. "Well, I just want to tell you, before you become like that half-wit back there: We will find the woman and your grandchildren. We'll find them, and when we do, I will tell them how Logan died in agony while his father watched when he could have stopped it. And _then,_ I will bring them for a visit, so your grandson can see what a freak you've become, with a zipper in your head and no memory of him.

"And once everything they ever loved about you has been thoroughly shattered, I will take Melany and Anthea and Rory, and I will personally gut them, one at a time. And I'll do it right here in your cell, so you can watch _that_, too."

Ambrose shuddered, hugging himself against a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. If what Lonot had described actually came to pass, _he_ would have to watch it, too. He glanced at Charles, wondering how the graphic threat would affect him. But Charles merely sat impassively, eyes filled with terrible knowledge but no visible reaction to Lonot's stated plan.

Lonot sighed impatiently, denied the satisfaction he was seeking. "Well, I guess I'll leave you to think about things… while you still can. Goodbye, Farsing."

Charles's only response was to turn his head forward and resume staring at that spot on the floor.


	6. Chapter 6 Jigsaw 3

_We're almost to the end of the first major arc of the story! Hope you're all still with me. This chapter was actually going to be the last of the arc, but the word count exceeded the limit on Livejournal, where I'm cross-posting, and since I had to divide it into two for LJ, I should do the same here even though the same length limit doesn't apply. _

_Once again, thanks to my beta readers, Madigirl and Blackletter. They have each been invaluable._

* * *

Overwhelmed by too much horror and too many dire emotions at once, Ambrose leaned against his bars and slid slowly down them until his rump hit the floor. His responses to what had happened were so extreme that they were nearly canceling each other out – empathy for the horror Charles had experienced; amazement and revulsion that he had managed to resist despite his son's profound suffering; terror for the remaining members of Charles's family should Lonot succeed in finding them; panic over Azkadellia's plan to mutilate Charles's brain. 

He turned to look into the other cell. Charles was sitting just as he had all along, still not moving or displaying any emotion. _Wake up!_ Ambrose wanted to scream. _Wake up and start looking back on your life! Revel in your achievements, your challenges, your regrets. Review every wonderful thing and every horrible thing that ever happened to you. Remember who you are until you can't anymore!_ If anyone were qualified to give this advice, it was certainly Ambrose.

Then again, maybe Charles was better off retreating into whatever mental closet he was currently occupying. Who was Ambrose to try to force him out of a protective cocoon to confront the monstrous events of the last few hours?

His eyes happened upon the back wall of his cell. _My name is Ambrose._ If not for Charles, he wouldn't know his own name. If not for him, he'd have no idea that he'd once been a royal advisor. He wouldn't know that he'd been a brilliant scientist, wouldn't know… Ambrose strained to remember what else he'd learned. Oh! He wouldn't know that he'd risked himself to stay at the Queen's side. He wouldn't even know why he'd had half his brain removed. Granted, he couldn't remember the reason for it right _now,_ but he knew that Charles had explained it a while back.

Hell, if not for Charles, he wouldn't know how to play Charms.

Chewing on a fingertip, Ambrose thought about Charles undergoing criminal extraction. In orchestrating that, Azkadellia would be erasing two lives – one for the first time, the other for the second. He hated that he was selfish enough to worry about this, but the truth was that when Charles's memory was gone, Ambrose would, to a large degree, cease to exist. That was a terrifying realization by itself, but equally distressing was the knowledge that once Charles was relieved of his memory, their friendship was likely dead, as well. It was one thing to rekindle a friendship between a person who remembered and one who didn't. Trying to keep that friendship alive when _neither_ could remember was an exercise in the blind leading the blind.

Closing his eyes, Ambrose fought to stave off burgeoning panic that was, at best, inappropriate. Making out Charles's impending tragedy to be about him was the worst kind of narcissism. The man had shown an inordinate amount of patience and kindness in trying to explain things to Ambrose, and he should be grateful. He _was_ grateful – what he should be doing is letting Charles know that _now,_ while the man could still remember what he had done for him.

He stood up, intent on telling Charles how he felt, but suddenly, he was not in the cell, but back in that dim room of obscure memory.

_He stirred the ashes in the fireplace, ensuring that all the torn pieces of the large diagram burned completely. The other men had begun to leave, watching through the covered windows, timing their departures so that there was no mass exodus that might be noticed from outside._

_A hand on his shoulder caused him to straighten and turn around. Charles was there. _

"_Time for me to go."_

_Ambrose nodded, swallowing. Charles had the role with the greatest risk, the weightiest responsibility. He hadn't hesitated to accept, knowing what was at stake, and he was definitely the right choice, but it still felt like sending him to cross a tightrope without benefit of a pole. "You have everything you need?"_

"_All the arrangements are made," Charles said. "I'll leave well before the suns are up."_

_A flutter in Ambrose's stomach created a shaky sigh. "Please be careful."_

_Charles smiled ironically. "I should be telling _you_ that. You're the one staying behind." His expression shifted. "Are you sure you about that, by the way?"_

No!_ he wanted to say. Instead, he nodded._

"_Because I can't help thinking that you'd be more valuable in hiding, helping to strategize."_

_Ambrose took a breath to quell the part of him that wanted to agree. "Possibly, but it would attract too much attention for me to leave now. And she'll need me."_

_Charles nodded without much conviction. Ambrose forced a smile and said, "Besides, strategy is one of your strong suits."_

"_Then why haven't I won more of our chess games?"_

_A pang of regret, unexpectedly strong, stung Ambrose. "I'll miss those."_

_Now it was Charles who forced a smile. "We'll play again."_

"_I hope so." Awkwardly, he held out his hand; the gesture seemed inappropriately dispassionate, as though they weren't probably saying their final goodbye. Charles shook the hand then put both of his on the younger man's shoulders._

"_You've given us hope," he said. "I only pray I can hold up my end."_

_Ambrose surprised himself with a laugh. "You're the only one who doubts it."_

_There was a final moment of silence between them, mostly because there was just too much to say, and then Charles nodded a farewell, crossed to the door, and left._

Thrust back into the present, Ambrose staggered slightly, as though the memory had physical weight. "Wow," he whispered to himself. "I wasn't even _trying_."

Part of him seemed capable of understanding the memory and how it related to the current situation, but that part was hampered by the confusion and lack of clarity that characterized the thinking of a man with only half the brain matter he'd been born with. What he needed was to run this memory by someone who could not only understand it but put it into context.

"Charles!" he cried excitedly. "I've just remembered something! I –"

"You know, I taught him to shoot."

Ambrose stopped short. "Huh? Who?" Charles wasn't staring at the floor anymore. His voice was still coming from far away, but it had lost that unnerving lack of inflection.

"Logan. I taught him target shooting. When he was thirteen."

"Oh." He wanted to sweep aside this conversation to get to the more urgent matter at hand, but couldn't bring himself to do it. "Um… I'm sure he was great at it."

"No, he was dreadful. I wasn't any good, either. We considered ourselves wildly successful if we actually managed to hit the target."

Try as he might, Ambrose couldn't think of an appropriate response. Then again, Charles didn't seem to require one.

"He never really had much interest in sports, rather like me. I dutifully introduced him to all the activities my father had told me I was supposed to enjoy, and Logan disliked them as much as I had. It was something we laughed about, through the years."

Thinking of Charles and his son sharing laughter was bitterly painful when Ambrose acknowledged how their last hours together had been spent. He couldn't help wondering if this were not the healthiest way for Charles to direct his thoughts, now that his remaining time for clear thinking was extremely limited. "Charles, I remem—"

"History, that was his passion," Charles continued. "He was fascinated by the past. Had no interest in the politics of the present, not until…" Lost in remembrance, Charles trailed off for a few seconds. Suddenly, he shook his head as though snapping back to the present. "I sent him and his family away just before Azkadellia seized Central City. I wanted… wanted them to be safe."

The desolation in his eyes and voice twisted in Ambrose's gut like a knife. Pain like that shouldn't have to be borne alone, if at all. It was a hideous, perverse thought, but maybe, in this particular case, criminal extraction would be a mercy.

Charles seemed to have come to the end of his musings. Ambrose frowned, a seed of unease growing in his mind. Didn't he have something he wanted to tell Charles? He was sure it had been very important.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, brain," he whispered, rubbing his brow anxiously. "Cough it up. The man's about to be –"

Footsteps sounded in the corridor, heading their way. Ambrose jerked his head toward the sound before looking frantically at Charles. He'd heard the approach as well, and when he met Ambrose's gaze, his fear was obvious. Trying to offer some kind of comfort, Ambrose moved as close to Charles as possible, until he was pressing against the barred door.

Charles stood quickly and came to his door as well, and the two of them just looked at each other. There was too much to be said for them to say anything.

Again?

Wait. They'd said goodbye once before… hadn't they? Ambrose was distracted by an unexpected feeling of déjà vu. The voice of Lonot barely penetrated his preoccupation.

"Hello, Charles. Ready to lose your mind?"

"Better that than my honor," Charles retorted.

Lonot smiled. "Your bravado would be more convincing if your voice weren't shaking."

"We have no time for this," grumbled another bald man, pushing past Lonot.

Ambrose started at the new voice. He'd heard it before, _seen_ this man before; he'd looked up into that cold face from a position of helplessness and known that he was little more than a laboratory animal. Seeing him now, Ambrose felt a desperate urge to move away.

"Open the door," commanded the man. He seemed accustomed to giving orders.

The additional longcoats looked to Lonot, who gave the nod, and the door to Charles's cell was opened. Charles recoiled by a couple of steps.

Lonot glared at the prisoner, failing to conceal his resentment. "Now, I suppose we'll finally find out what you're hiding."

_Hiding._

The new man didn't take his gaze from Charles. "_I_ will find out what he's hiding."

"_I can't help thinking that you'd be more valuable in hiding."_

"So you're the alchemist." Charles moved backward again, until he'd reached the far corner of the cell, as though the extra distance might discourage them, convince them to give up.

The alchemist gestured to the longcoats and entered the cell. Without preamble, he brandished a rod and zapped Charles in the shoulder. The charge sent Charles to his knees and the longcoats moved to take him by the arms.

But Charles wasn't ready to go. He fought their attempts to pull him across the floor, and one of the men punched him.

"Stop that!" bellowed the alchemist. "You could damage the brain. I know how to deal with this."

He reached out with the rod again and the longcoats let Charles go. Charles leaned back on his hands and tried to scoot away, but the rod caught him in the side. The alchemist gave him a longer zap this time, and Charles collapsed all the way to the floor.

The longcoats lifted him by the arms and half-carried him from the corner toward the door. Ambrose gripped his cell bars so tightly he felt the slickness of blood on one palm.

"Wait." The longcoats stopped just inside the cell door at Lonot's order. The alchemist glared at him and Charles sluggishly raised his eyes to meet the general's penetrating gaze. "You can stop this, Charles."

"He can't stop it," the alchemist interrupted. "The sorceress was quite clear –"

"Just tell us, right now," Lonot said, ignoring him, "what we want to know."

For the first time, indecision appeared in Charles's expression. Ambrose had to admit, this was a very strategic move on Lonot's part. After all that Charles had already been through, and in the face of the horrific violation about to occur, offering him one last chance to part with the information willingly and remain whole had to be one powerful temptation. He wondered if he had been given such a last chance, or if the alchemist had simply proceeded on Azkadellia's command as he intended to now.

As Charles hesitated, Lonot pressed. "I promise you a quick death, Charles. No extraction, no more torture. Just tell me about Archaeon and your nightmare will end."

Ambrose stopped breathing mid-inhale. _Archaeon._ The word stimulated a variety of feelings and images in his mind, starting with the picture of single-celled microorganisms. There was some kind of significance to them, something strongly emotional. He flashed on the meeting in the dim room once again, with all the people gathered around the desktop studying the diagram.

"Trying to redeem yourself, Lonot?" Charles asked, clearly trying to mask how tempted he felt. "Think you can buy back your soul with some backhanded mercy?"

Lonot's face darkened in anger. "I'm giving you a chance to preserve some dignity, fool! Tell me about Archaeon and you can die without pain, and intact."

_Archaeon. The dim room. The gathered people._

Charles's exhalations were harsh as he struggled to find the strength to answer. "No," he finally said, his voice breaking. Ambrose heard it as though from a great distance, his attention claimed by the mystery of the diagram. "I can't. I _can't._"

Ambrose half-closed his eyes, letting the memory drive itself. _He was saying something about… communications… designated drop-points… codes to be used. Secrecy. No sharing of location information. All communications carried out indirectly for security._

_Suddenly, he was looking at the diagram. At the top was a series of rectangles containing names with lines drawn between, connecting them into a hierarchical structure. Charles's name was in the top rectangle. Below that, more labeled rectangles and ovals, also connected by lines. These lines had directional arrows. A flow chart._

_He was looking at the operational blueprint for a system. Archaeon was a system._

It was like opening the door on a furnace. Ambrose was overwhelmed by the light and heat of suddenly recalled information that connected him not only to who he used to be, but what he had cared about so passionately. Glorious understanding enveloped him like a familiar blanket.

In biology, archaea were single-celled microorganisms, he suddenly recalled, known to be able to survive in the most extreme conditions – extraordinarily durable life forms, he remembered with growing excitement. Archaea were among the most ancient and enduring forms of life in the world.

It was the perfect symbol for their movement.

"You're a stupid man, Farsing," Lonot growled.

The alchemist's patience had run out. "Let us pass, Lonot. The sorceress will soon have all the answers she needs. But _I_ must get to work."

Charles had recovered enough to shake off one of the longcoats and thread his arms through the bars, hugging them like a desperate lover. Vicious with exasperation, the alchemist shoved the rod into the crook of Charles's neck and held it there until he was dangling limply, arms still entangled in the bars.

"Archaeon!" Lonot shouted, leaning close to Charles's head. "Tell me what you know about it!"

"Out of the way," the alchemist snarled. "Get him to the extraction lab."

Ambrose straddled the two realities – the one in his mind and the one in the cell block – until they seemed to collide. The old knowledge freshly within his grasp blended with the current circumstances; he couldn't assign each element to where it belonged. He wasn't completely aware that there _were_ two realities in play.

"Tell me about Archaeon!" Lonot was shouting.

Ambrose looked up sharply. Two longcoats were finally detaching Charles from the bars. Nearby was the man Ambrose had recognized; he had been the one to remove his brain.

_That's what he's going to do to Charles_, he thought frantically. _He's going to steal my friend's mind_.

"Archaeon!"

"_I'll leave well before the suns are up." "Please be careful."_

"Farsing! What is Archaeon?"

"_You've given us hope. I only pray I can hold up my end."_

"Charles! Tell me."

"_I did the right thing."_

"_I wanted them to be safe."_

"_There is no such thing as good anymore."_

"He's going to take your brain, Charles! Tell me about Archaeon and you can stop him!"

"Cells," Ambrose said to the air around him. "Archaeon is cells."

He didn't notice Lonot was near until he spoke to him. "What's that?"

Ambrose hardly realized he was speaking aloud. "Archaeon is cells. Independent cells, separate but working together."

"_Ambrose!"_ Charles cried hoarsely, his eyes stricken and horrified. He struggled weakly against the hold of the two longcoats.

The anguished exclamation registered on Ambrose like a slap, and he jerked fully into the here-and-now reality. Looking from Charles's appalled expression to Lonot's eager, alert one, Ambrose shrank away from the bars. "What? What is it? What did I do?"

"You were telling me about Archaeon."

Blankly, he repeated, "Archaeon? What's that?"

"You said it was 'independent, separate cells working together.'" Lonot looked thoughtful.

"He knows nothing," scoffed the alchemist. "_This_ one has what Azkadellia wants. Let me do my job."

Harsh laughter erupted from the general. Ambrose was amazed – he would have bet Lonot didn't know _how_ to laugh. "If you _had_ been doing your job, _I_ wouldn't have wasted all that time trying to break this one."

"What are you talking about?"

"Idiot! Your headcase knew all about Archaeon. You _have his brain._ You could have just asked about it while you were poking it for information about that contraption of his."

"Contraption?" Ambrose repeated curiously. Then he noticed Charles, looking gray and ill and utterly bereft. He was staring at Ambrose with a horror-stricken expression. Ambrose felt a flutter in his stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

The alchemist's jaw muscles flexed madly. "You can't know –"

"Neither can you until you consult the brain."

"Don't tell me my job, Lonot."

"Fair enough. But the headcase responded to the word 'Archaeon.' He was part of the cabinet and it's logical that he would have been involved in any plan for it to go underground. Before going to the trouble of carving up a whole new brain, it would make sense to first check with the one you already have at your disposal."

Ambrose found himself nodding. Lonot's suggestion did make a lot of sense.

The alchemist appeared to come to a decision. "Put him back in the cell," he barked at the longcoats holding Charles. "We'll come back for him later if necessary."

He strode away, not looking back, as Charles was shoved into his cell. Charles staggered a few steps, came to a stop, and stretched a hand to the wall, leaning heavily and hanging his head.

Ambrose, confused about what had happened, kept glancing between Charles and Lonot, who had remained behind. He waited to see if Lonot would say something, hoping that any conversation might give him a clue to what was going on.

Lonot stared at Charles's back for some time before saying, "Charles."

Without turning around, Charles said flatly, "You're still here?"

"I'll try to keep my promise."

"Your oath to the Queen? Bit late for that."

Lonot's jaw worked as he appeared to swallow a cutting response. "I'm talking about the quick death. No guarantees, but I'll do what I can."

"You serve the darkness, Lonot. You've renounced both honor and mercy."

"I'm trying to help you, you self-righteous fool."

"Many thanks. Now go away."

A brief internal struggle was documented on Lonot's face, as regret was quickly mastered by resolve – the expression of a man who'd made a questionable tactical decision and knew it was too late to second-guess it.

Shrugging, Lonot turned to go. On his way down the corridor, he smirked and tossed a little wave at Ambrose. "Thanks for your help."

Staring at the retreating leather coat, Ambrose called, "Oh, right, like I'd ever help _you!_" He turned to Charles. "You believe that guy? _Me_ help _him_. Hah! Help him over a cliff, maybe." He laughed, hoping Charles would join in, but his friend simply straightened, moved away from the wall, and sat down heavily on his bench, as though bearing a tremendous weight.

"Hey," Ambrose said, frowning, "are you okay?"

In lieu of responding, Charles rested his head in his hands.

Still concerned and very confused, Ambrose murmured, "I'll take that as a 'no.'" Looking around the cell as though for inspiration, he happened to notice the words scratched into his back wall. That brought to mind the game that he and Charles had played recently.

He clapped his hands together briskly. "Hey, you know what we should do? We should play that game again. You remember? The one with the grid and the circles and triangles and diamonds?"

"Charms."

"Yes! I'll give you a rematch. What do you say?"

"No. Thank you."

"Oh. Okay." Ambrose gave it some more thought and then brightened. "Well, you want to talk?"

"Not particularly."

"All right." A thought occurred to him. "Hey, Charles. Are you… are you angry with me?"

"No, Am–" He stopped and sighed. "No, I'm not angry with you." Charles ran a hand through his hair, a clear sign of agitation. Ambrose noticed that he kept his head down, not looking at him.

He let the silence extend for a while, hoping it would eventually become companionable, but he lost patience with the waiting. "I know! Why don't I try to remember that last time you and I saw each –"

"_No._"

The vehemence in the clipped response was surprising. "But you're always asking –"

"_No,_ Ambr–" Charles sighed, sounding frustrated. "No."

Ambrose tried to remember what he had said or done to upset Charles, but he found he had no memory of anything since… well, he just wasn't sure. "Charles –"

"I think I'll sleep for a while," Charles announced, curling up slowly on the bench, his back turned to Ambrose.


	7. Chapter 7 Jigsaw 4

_This is it - the end of the first major story arc. Not the end of the story overall, however. Stick around; there will be lots more to come!_

_Time to thank the betas again: Madigirl and Blackletter. Their input and enthusiasm definitely improved the quality of this story. Thanks, ladies!_

* * *

For the next few days, it felt as though Charles _always_ had his back turned to Ambrose. He was preoccupied, always tired, and never much in the mood for conversation. Rarely did he make eye contact with Ambrose. Whatever had occurred that Ambrose couldn't remember appeared to have affected Charles's entire outlook.

Gradually, though, Ambrose detected restlessness in his friend, a sense of nervous anticipation. It increased over time until the morning when Ambrose awoke to find Charles prowling his cell like a hungry cat. When he realized that Ambrose was awake, he stopped the overt pacing, but couldn't really conceal his agitation. He'd sit on the bench for a while, get to his feet and lean against the wall, stroll to the cell door and lean, crane his neck to look down the corridor.

On and on and on it went, until Ambrose finally snapped, "Oh, for pity's sake, Charles! If you're waiting for a bus, you may as well take a seat. It'll be a long time coming."

"I can't help it! This waiting is driving me mad."

Ambrose blinked. "You don't mean you really _are_ waiting for a bus?"

Charles showed no sign of having heard him. "What could they be waiting for? If they didn't get what they were after, they should have come back for me by now. And if they _did_ get it, why bother keeping me around? It doesn't make sense."

"Let me get this straight. You're upset because they haven't come to torture you some more?"

Charles stopped pacing and really looked at Ambrose, which was both gratifying and a little unnerving. "How much do you remember from a week ago?"

Embarrassment caused Ambrose to shift on his bench. He didn't want to admit he could barely recall anything specific, or that he really hadn't mastered keeping track of the passage of time. Blustering, he answered, "I remember as much as I want to, I think."

There was a moment of surprised silence, and then Charles surprised _him_ by bursting into laughter. "That is almost certainly true, my friend."

Ambrose could almost have wept with gratitude over the use of "my friend." When Charles's laughter continued for much longer than seemed appropriate, however, he started to worry. Had his friend's sanity finally cracked?

He got to his feet and came toward the bars cautiously. "Charles? Charles, you don't sound quite… Are you all right?"

Charles's laughter continued to build until it sounded downright insane. Licking his lips nervously, Ambrose started glancing down the corridor – half afraid that someone would hear and come to deliver punishment, half wondering if he should try to _call_ someone for help.

Charles flopped onto his bench, his hilarity having peaked and started to diminish. Gasps began to punctuate the laughter, and Ambrose was disturbed to note tears running down his friend's face. There seemed to be too many of them.

The laughter dissolved into lethargic half-sobs, which Charles didn't bother to disguise.

"Charles," Ambrose said, thoroughly distressed. "Charles, what's wrong? You don't seem… well."

This inexplicably triggered a fresh spate of giggling – which was perhaps the most disturbing sound yet; Charles giggling! – but it didn't last as long this time. Charles seemed to be running out of steam.

Finally, as he lay on the bench trying to catch his breath, not bothering to wipe away the tear-tracks on his face, Charles said, "I just want it to be over. I need it to be over now."

Ambrose didn't know what to say to this chilling confession, so he just said nothing.

When they finally did come for him the next day, Charles was asleep. Ambrose had to hiss his name several times to wake him up before the procession arrived.

If he'd known what was going to happen, he wouldn't have. He'd have figured that every second Charles spent unaware was a blessing.

As it was, by the time Azkadellia, Lonot, and two of Lonot's men arrived at Charles's cell, the older man was awake and sitting up, waiting for whatever was in store for him.

Ambrose stationed himself at his cell door. Uneasy, he wasn't sure what was about to happen, but keeping his distance would have felt like abandoning Charles. It wasn't as though he could actually influence events, but he could at least bear witness.

As she came to a stop, Azkadellia glanced his way and flashed him a knowing smile that made his pulse stutter. He had the urge to back away and maybe cower under his bench, but he settled for dropping his gaze until she stopped looking at him.

"I thought you'd like to know," she said, turning her attention to Charles, "your friend's brain was most forthcoming. Archaeon's secrets are now mine. We found all the drop-points, intercepted messengers, and eventually located most of the cells. The rest will be found within a day or two."

Ambrose frowned in confusion. His friend's brain? What did she mean by that?

"Our people?" The dead tone of voice and lack of curiosity in Charles's eyes told Ambrose he knew the answer already.

"Oh, executed, of course," she said casually. "Well… some of them aren't _quite_ dead… yet." Azkadellia smiled brightly and Charles looked away. Ambrose was glad he didn't ask for clarification; he really didn't want to know any more.

Azkadellia had turned slightly, taking a few leisurely steps as she spoke. "I imagine it must complicate your feelings, knowing that a careless remark from a_friend_ destroyed everything you've fought so hard to protect."

She was now standing in front of Ambrose, looking at him pointedly.

"It made no difference," Charles said tiredly. "What you were going to do to me would have produced the same result."

"True." Azkadellia reached for Ambrose's face and he shrank away automatically. Her expression hardened, but she kept her hand extended. Suddenly, Ambrose couldn't move. In fact, he felt a tug in her direction, even though she wasn't touching him, and he was slowly pulled back within her reach. The extended hand stroked his hair and cheek, making him shudder.

"Still, his slip _was_ voluntary, not coerced," she said softly, still addressing Charles. "You must feel… so betrayed."

"He didn't betray me," he heard Charles say, more forcefully this time. "He had no idea what he was doing."

They were talking about_him!_ "What? What are you talking about? What did I _do?_" He tried to pull away again but was still held fast by her magic.

"Oh, he must have had_some_ idea," Azkadellia said, running a finger lightly along Ambrose's zipper, fondling the tab in a parody of affection and familiarity. It was incredibly personal and violating, and he was humiliated to find himself tearing up. "Why else would he blurt out a clue to exactly what we were looking for just in time to save you from getting one of our special haircuts?"

"Clue? What clue? Charles, what's she talking about?"

"Nothing! Don't listen to her."

What a ridiculous suggestion. "She's standing right here! How can I not listen?"

"Azkadellia! Leave him alone."

With a lighthearted laugh, she released her magic, and the momentum of Ambrose's resistance propelled him backward and onto the floor. Suddenly self-conscious, he turned his face away slightly to try and surreptitiously wipe his tears with a sleeve.

"I was only trying to express my gratitude for all his help. Anyway, now that I've crushed your pathetic attempt to keep the Queen's regime alive, my attention can turn to more important matters."

"What help?" Ambrose demanded, getting to his feet shakily. "I never gave you any help! Why won't anyone explain what they mean? You're talking about me like I'm not even here!"

"It's nothing," Charles told him.

"Oh, just knock it off already! It's _something,_ all right. You look like you lost your best friend, she's talking about crushing regimes and killing people! I don't understand any of it! And what was she talking about before? Ar-something. Arc. Archaeon! What's that supposed to mean? Archaeon is a, an organism. A microorganism, single-celled, and it…Oh." There was a tickling in his mind suddenly. "Oh, wait. Wait. It's… it's also a code name. I… picked it out myself."

He slowly paced back and forth, coaxing more details from forgotten corners. "We… we came up with an idea. An idea to send some of us into hiding. We were… we were trying… trying to…" He was losing it. The thought that had been so clear seconds ago was fading like breath on a cool pane of glass.

"You were trying to beat me," Azkadellia said, her voice hard and bright as a diamond. "You thought you could establish an underground government and organize an effective resistance to undermine me when my takeover succeeded."

"Yes! Right!" Ambrose shouted excitedly. Then he remembered her earlier words and became uncertain. Afraid. "Wait, though. You said… you said Archaeon is… Oh. Oh, no. Oh, _gods,_ no." Friends. He'd had friends in Archaeon. He couldn't remember them, not even their names, but he knew he'd had them. Wait, Charles was one of them! "You! You were, you… coordinated communications between the cells. Yes, I remember that. Sort of. I…" He looked to Azkadellia, a horrified awareness growing inside him. "And you said that _my_ brain… and that I said something… Charles? Charles, what did I do? _What did I do?_"

"It was an accident," Charles said, trying to calm him. "Some kind of synaptic fluke."

"Yes," Azkadellia confirmed. "In the blink of an eye, you helped to destroy an organization that was originally _your_ idea. The irony is delicious, don't you think?"

"My idea," Ambrose repeated numbly. "I de… I destroyed it?" He looked past the terrifying evil woman and found the eyes of his friend. _"How?"_

Charles shook his head, but something in Ambrose's expression made him stop trying to downplay what had happened. "You… I don't know; you seemed to be in some sort of trance." He glanced at Lonot. Ambrose had forgotten the general was there. "_He_ kept mentioning Archaeon. It… must have triggered some memories. You said something that suggested you knew about the organization."

Ambrose felt his face go cold, and Charles spoke more urgently. "You didn't know what you were doing! You didn't even seem to know quite where you were at the time."

"Oh, poor _Ambrose_." Azkadellia's voice dripped with false sympathy. "Don't feel so devastated. What you said told us hardly anything. Why, if we hadn't had your brain on hand, I doubt your utterance would be worth anything at all."

"My… brain? My brain is here?" He didn't know whether to be excited or sickened.

"It's given us hours of pleasure," she said. "So much _useful_ information."

"Stop torturing him!" Charles shouted. "He's a victim, not your co-conspirator. He's not responsible for any information you might have stolen from him."

"No," she agreed sharply, spinning toward him. "But you? You were completely responsible for _your_ actions, weren't you? Your defiance cost me time and resources that could have been spent in other ways. I really can't _tell_ you how much that bothers me, Charles." She nodded to Lonot, who opened the door to Charles's cell. "So I think that I will _show_ you, instead."

A cold, cold panic washed over Ambrose. Azkadellia plus Charles plus prison cell equaled nothing good. He knew it was silly and pointless, but he found himself looking around frantically for something, _anything_ he could use to defend his friend. But there was nothing.

As the sorceress approached, Charles took a couple of steps back, but then stopped. He maintained steady eye contact even as his chest expanded and contracted faster and more erratically.

"You've been a bad, bad boy, Charles," crooned Azkadellia, "and bad boys… must be punished."

Breathing ever more frantically, Charles swallowed hard, but his facial expression remained calm… perhaps even a little eager? It was that which undid Ambrose.

"Charles!" he blurted uselessly.

His friend glanced his way, and in his eyes, Ambrose read a clear message: _I'm ready._ Ambrose was amazed that Charles could face death so calmly while he, in no danger at all, could hardly keep from wetting himself.

"Lonot tells me he promised you a quick death," Azkadellia said, again claiming Charles's full attention. She walked toward him with sinuous deliberation. "I think I can accommodate you."

Waving her hand, she employed the same trick she'd used on Ambrose earlier, and Charles began to tremble and grunt softly as he instinctively resisted her pull. Closer and closer she drew him, until Ambrose wondered if her goal was to kiss him. But when Charles's face was about ten inches from hers, the pulling ceased and he was held in place.

"Say 'ah,'" she whispered.

At first, Ambrose didn't understand what was happening. He saw Charles's eyes widen in fear or pain, and then his mouth opened and he emitted an awful choking sound. Ambrose thought she was strangling him until a trail of strange vapor snaked out of his mouth.

Azkadellia appeared to breathe deeply, taking the vapor into her own mouth. Charles continued to make strangled protestations until the last of the vapor had left him. At that point, he simply collapsed, and Ambrose knew he was dead, just an empty husk that had been robbed of its life force by means of quite possibly the ultimate form of rape. He landed on his knees, remaining upright for a couple of very surreal seconds, then fell onto his side and moved no more.

Ambrose felt strangely disconnected – from the scene and from his own body – as he watched Azkadellia shudder slightly, closing her eyes as though in the throes of a mild orgasm. He supposed that once he rejoined with his body, he would be violently sick over that image.

She sighed in satisfaction, opened her eyes, and came out of the cell. Lonot signaled his men, and the longcoats moved toward the cell to retrieve the body.

"No," Azkadellia said sharply. "Leave him for a while."

Lonot looked shocked. "Sorceress?"

She glanced at Ambrose. "I want to create an indelible memory of this, and our friend over there has… retention issues."

Uncertainly, and with apparent distaste, Lonot gestured for one of the men to close Charles's cell.

Ambrose must have reconnected with his body after all, because he felt his blood begin to boil then. Charles had been misused in some horrible ways since he'd come to this prison, but to have his corpse serve as some sort of lesson-_cum_-punishment for _him_ was pushing things too far.

He lunged forward, grasping the bars of his cell door, and spat out, "You'll pay for this!"

Everyone in the corridor turned to stare at him, which made him very self-conscious and definitely took the edge off his outraged indignation. When Azkadellia actually laughed, he felt his face reddening.

"'You'll pay for this?'" she repeated. "Really, that's the best you can do?" She laughed again, and Lonot's two longcoats snickered. "Oh, how far the mighty have fallen, when the fabled intellect of the great Ambrose can only find a melodramatic cliché to express his rage on behalf of his fallen friend." She performed a casual flick of her hand, and Ambrose was lifted off his feet and tossed through the air.

He hit the back wall with his left side, fell and caught the edge of the bench with his back, and wound up lying face down on the floor.

"'My name is Ambrose.'"

With some effort, he lifted his face off the floor to look at Azkadellia as she stood at his door, reading his crudely etched pronouncement ironically.

His left shoulder throbbed, his back felt as though someone had beaten it with a fireplace poker, and he was seeing stars when his chin had smacked the stone floor. All of this probably explained his choice of responses: "I wrote that."

Smirking, Azkadellia simply said, "I wonder how Ambrose would feel about it."

Screwing up his face in confusion – maybe he hadn't heard her correctly? – he struggled to sit up so he could ask what she had meant. But by that time, she was already well down the corridor, leaving him alone and forgotten.

0o0o0

When the nightmarish memory blitz finally ended, he found that he'd somehow slid from his slumped sitting position onto the floor, using the edge of the bench as a backrest. His spine complained from improper support and poor posture, and he wondered just how long he'd been like this, watching the horrific scenes play out inside his head.

As he tried to stretch, his muscles squawked and he grimaced and felt stiffness on his face. He touched one cheek and felt starchy dryness; his lower eyelids, however, were moist. He must have been crying intermittently as he remembered the tragic events, resulting in waking up wearing a mask of dried tears.

He was numb from serial emotional traumas. Now he understood – if only for this short moment which probably wouldn't last – the acute agitation he'd been experiencing. Calling on knowledge of psychology that he had only just now been able to recall, he felt confident that he'd experienced a psychotic break.

"Great," he murmured. "That's a huge help. Thanks."

His voice seemed uncomfortably loud in the silence, and for an instant he chided himself: _Quiet, you'll wake Charles!_ Realization slammed home like a fist to his stomach.

Charles hadn't been sleeping while he struggled to remember what had happened. He'd been dead from the beginning.

Almost against his will, his eyes sought the cell across from his. Staring, appalled, he wondered how he'd ever deceived himself into thinking Charles was asleep. He was sprawled on the floor, legs twisted in a very un-restful position.

Suddenly he shot to his feet. He'd moved! Charles's leg had m—

His heart flipped over inside his chest as a rat scurried out of the leg of Charles's trousers. He turned his back completely, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply, in and out. He was close to vomiting, and since he hadn't eaten yesterday, it would probably be dry heaves, but he wanted to avoid it anyway.

Footsteps from the corridor became voices here in the cell block. He opened his eyes but didn't turn toward the front of the cell again.

"Gods! Look at this. Did you see this?"

The door to a cell opened.

"Aww, wow! This is foul."

"Yeah, well, you add a corpse and rats and time together, you get a shredded mess."

Swallowing dryly, he closed his eyes again and folded his arms tightly across his chest. He could wait this out. He could.

"Why would anyone want to just leave a dead body layin' around like this?"

"I heard it was by order of the sorceress. Who knows why she does things?"

"Hush, idiot!"

"Oh, I'm not saying anything."

There were sounds of movement and grunts of exertion and disgust. Something was dragged a short way across stone until the men could be heard lifting it. They didn't say anything else, other than to tell each other they were pulling the wrong way or about to drop the stretcher.

When he was sure they were gone, he opened his eyes again. Facing the back wall, the first thing he saw was the words he'd scratched on there what seemed like a lifetime ago.

_My name is Ambrose._

What was it Charles had said about his suddenly remembering Archaeon? _"An accident. Some kind of synaptic fluke."_

Azkadellia again mocked him: _"The fabled intellect of the great Ambrose."_

"_You didn't know what you were doing! You didn't even seem to know quite where you were at the time."_

"That's true," he whispered to the ghost of Charles's memory. "And I'm afraid… maybe I never will."

He sat down slowly, thinking, pondering that four-word sentence etched just above his head.

When he'd reached a decision, he removed a button from one of his coat sleeves and scratched lines through all the words, rendering them unreadable.


	8. Chapter 8 Road Trip

_Bet you thought I'd given up, didn't you? Sorry for the long pause between chapters. I've been battling supernatural forces bent on keeping me from completing the next chapter. Okay, the forces were natural, but the rest is true.  
_  
_As usual, my betas, Madigirl and Blackletter, deserve prodigious amounts of credit for their invaluable contributions toward improving this chapter. Thanks, you two!_

_Also, I usually don't address the issue of reviews - I figure no one's forcing me to post, so no one's under any obligation to give feedback - but in the case of this story, I feel I should mention how much the comments have meant to me. So many of those who have commented seem really passionate about the story, and that is both humbling and moving. So, thank you all._

* * *

"All I'm saying," he told the two men riding in the back of the truck with him, "is that science is more powerful than magic." 

He punctuated his pronouncement with a decisive nod and a small smile that said "_I know exactly what I'm talking about," _and leaned back as he folded his arms. He had forgotten, of course, that the sides of the truck were mere canvas, so there was an abrupt moment of_ ohmygodI'mfallingbackward!_ accompanied by some brief flailing of limbs and an embarrassing overcorrection before he'd righted himself to stability. All in all, he felt he'd handled it rather smoothly.

His companions were both staring at him. The one with the prematurely receding dung-colored hair looked bored half to death (he assumed the man was lacking in mental acuity); the other, a handsome fellow with sandy-blond hair and gray eyes, seemed perplexed and rather fascinated in spite of himself. _He_ could probably be taught at least some rudimentary principles and concepts, so perhaps the effort wasn't being completely wasted.

NotStupid frowned as he thought the statement over. "Okay, you lost me," he admitted.

"Gods, will you stop humoring him already?" Stupid groaned, rolling his head around to stretch his thick neck.

"I just wanna know what he means by that."

"He's a _headcase_; he probably doesn't even _know_ what he means."

He chuckled indulgently. Yes, the man was definitely not the brightest sun in the sky. Anyone should be able to tell that while he may be a little forgetful and sometimes lost the thread of conversation right in the middle of participating in one, he always knew exactly what he meant when he was able to finish his thought.

"What I mean," he said, pointedly looking at Stupid for a moment before continuing, "is that you have to be _born_ with the ability to do magic. Whereas_ anyone_…" He paused and glanced at Stupid again briefly. "…anyone with a certain amount of mental resources, at least, can learn to use science to achieve many of the same things magic can accomplish."

"How does that make science more powerful than magic?" Stupid demanded.

"Thought you weren't interested," said NotStupid, raising an eyebrow.

"I just wanna prove he's full of nonsense so you'll stop encouraging him to talk us to death!"

He snickered. "I couldn't talk someone to death! That would be _magic_. I'm a _scientist_."

"Aha!" Stupid exclaimed. "So magic _is_ more powerful."

With a lengthy sigh of _oh-how-the-dense-do-tax-my-patience,_ he explained. Slowly.

"As I said, you have to be born with magical ability to do magic. Only a handful of people are born with that ability. So that gives a handful of people, individually, a certain amount of power, yes. But since you don't need to be born with anything but the ability to think and apply certain principles to learn to use science, there are a lot more of _us_ than there are of _them_." He again sat back, more carefully this time, and smiled at them.

Stupid rolled his eyes and rubbed his dung-ish hair in apparent frustration. NotStupid simply said, gently, "That's pretty much exactly what you said before. What I'm not getting is how that makes science more powerful than magic, you see? I mean, a witch can kill with a wave of her hand."

Snorting, he leaned forward suddenly in his exasperation. The truck at that moment made a slight curve, and he tumbled off the wooden crate he'd been using as a seat. Stupid laughed nastily.

The sides of the truck floor were lined with crates; this truck was clearly meant to haul cargo rather than passengers. He supposed that said a lot about his status, but wondered what it said about his companions. Crawling back toward his seat with as much dignity as possible, he scowled at them both.

"_Numbers!_ Don't you get it? Sheer numbers tell the tale. There are a handful of magical folk against _thousands_ who know how to apply science, or who can be taught to. So yeah, a witch can wave her hand and kill one man, or maybe ten of them at once, but while that's happening, the rest of us could be using technology to engineer her defeat."

He had decided that perching on the crates was dangerous, and so he remained on the floor and now leaned back with confidence against the crate he'd formerly sat upon.

"Magic's great, don't get me wrong. But given the choice, well…" Confident that he'd made his point, he placed his hands behind his head and waited for it to sink in with his audience.

NotStupid looked thoughtful, but Stupid simply gaped for a moment before beginning to bray like a laughing donkey. "Oh, okay, then I guess we better tell Azkadellia to watch out, huh? 'Hey Sorceress, look out for all the scientists! They're gonna come after you with their abacuses and slide rules and you won't stand a chance!'"

Rolling his eyes, he was all set to supply a stinging retort when NotStupid got up, worked his way toward the front of the truck, and tapped on the back window. "Let's take a break!" he shouted to the driver.

"Are we there?"

"No, halfwit," chided Stupid. "Didn't you hear him say we're just taking a break?"

The truck had slowed and was pulling over. He waited until it had stopped completely before standing up, in order to avoid another embarrassing tumble. "Where are we going again?"

Stupid sighed. "How many times do we have to tell you? We're going to Central City."

He brightened. "Central City! I've been there before."

"No kidding."

"Really. I…" He paused, frowning. "But I can't remember what I used to do there, or what the place looks like. Weird, huh?"

NotStupid climbed down out of the truck and waited until he had done the same. He indicated a cluster of trees and brush about forty feet off the road. "You can take care of any business over there, Zip. Don't go beyond that big tree or we'll have to chase you down, and when we catch you, it won't be pleasant."

He nodded immediately, anxious that there be no unpleasantness. He didn't know exactly what NotStupid might be threatening, but something told him he wouldn't want to find out.

NotStupid waved him on, and he took off, reveling in the freedom to move, to _run!_ How long had it been since he'd been able to run? He had no idea how long he'd been in that prison. In fact, he couldn't really remember much of what had happened while he was there.

He tripped over a root – or maybe his own feet – and went down, planting his face into tall grass and soft dirt and getting a good whiff of earth and growth and just life in general. It was possibly the greatest thing he'd ever smelled, and he found himself rolling around, flattening the weeds and laughing like a child.

"Get up, you idiot!" bellowed Stupid from over by the truck. "Go do your business or get back in the truck. We're not setting up camp."

Oh! Right. He was supposed to be relieving himself. He sprang to his feet, waved to the men with guns, and hurried over to the nearest bush. He had learned a long time ago – although he didn't remember _how_ he'd learned it – that it was dangerous to urinate against trees in the O.Z. They sometimes didn't react well. Bushes, however, were generally pretty safe.

That led him to study the surrounding flora a bit. Didn't things used to grow greener? More vibrant and healthy-looking? In fact, he could see several dead and rotting trees in the woods that spread behind where he stood. Had things always been like this? He felt certain they hadn't.

His botanical reverie was interrupted by Stupid's voice calling, "Hey! This isn't a sightseeing tour!" Startled, he turned his head and saw NotStupid walking with Driver around to the other side of the truck while Stupid remained leaning against the cab, watching for his return. Nature having finished calling, he closed his trousers and took a last look around before starting back.

He took his time, wanting to enjoy his last moments of relative freedom. Stupid alternated between watching him with a bored look and glancing over his shoulder as if wondering what NotStupid and Driver were doing on the other side of the truck. Finally, his curiosity must have overwhelmed him, because he started to walk around the cab toward the other side. First, however, he stopped, pointed to his prisoner, pointed to a place on the ground beside the truck, and then held up his gun. The message was fairly clear, and he nodded enthusiastically to show that he'd understood. Stupid nodded once, then headed around to the other side of the truck.

Despite that entire pantomimed exchange, a tingly kind of excitement came over him as he realized that no one was watching him right now. It was the first time since he'd been taken prisoner that he'd been left both unwatched and unconfined. He glanced over his shoulder at the huge expanse of forest behind him. He could take off! He could disappear into that woods, and they would have no idea which way he went. He could be free! Yes! He could be free of jails and jailers and insulting nicknames and people telling him what to do and where to do it and when to stop. He could be free to run whenever he felt like it, to reminisce to his heart's content and his brain's capacity, and to make a new life for himself.

Fortunately, before he acted on this impulse, he realized that he had no idea where he was, no food or water, no special skills for surviving alone in the wilderness, and no knowledge of disguising his path so that they couldn't track and find him. There was one of him (with his half a brain) and three of them (presumably with whole ones), and _they_ carried guns. He'd already been promised "unpleasant" consequences should he choose to do what he was busily fantasizing about doing, and there was little chance that an escape attempt would succeed. So, yeah, it was better to go back to the truck. He started to jog, worried that someone might catch him standing around and guess at his momentary lapse into hypothetical disobedience.

As he approached the truck, he wondered why the longcoats had gathered on the other side of the vehicle. It didn't seem like the smartest course of action for men who were transporting a prisoner. Once he got close to the truck, he could hear what sounded like a low-decibel argument taking place. He slowed his steps and tried to tread more lightly, hoping to hear what was being said without being heard himself.

"... can't really be serious!" Stupid was saying.

"Where's Zip? Shouldn't you be watching him?"

"He's fine, he's on his way back. Maybe someone should be keeping an eye on _you_, though, if you're starting to find him scary."

"You heard him in there," NotStupid countered calmly. "Ican't believe _you_ don't see any danger."

"Danger! From a zipperhead? The one who's been told twelve times that we're on our way to Central City but still keeps asking where we're going at least once an hour? The guy who doesn't remember his own name? Who barely remembers he was in prison for months?"

"No, I'm talking about the headcase who can talk real persuasively about how enough regular people with science and technology could overthrow someone who has magical powers."

"He said that?" This voice was less familiar; it must have belonged to Driver.

"He says a lot of things," Stupid growled. "He also forgets things as quick as he thinks 'em. I bet if you asked him to explain the whole science-beats-magic thing again, he wouldn't even remember the conversation.

Confusion wrinkled his brow as he listened. What exactly was the problem here? Had he said something wrong? NotStupid seemed upset with him, and Driver sounded as though he might be getting concerned, too.

"Maybe he wouldn't," said NotStupid. "But like you said, he says a lot of things. How long before this particular lecture turns up again in that carved-up brain of his? And who's to say he won't happen to have a sympathetic, impressionable audience the next time?"

He heard Stupid start to scoff, but Driver talked over him. "So what is it you think we should do?"

There was a pause. He held his breath, desperate to hear the answer to this himself.

NotStupid sighed. "I think maybe taking him to Central City is a bad idea."

"A bad idea."

"Yeah."

Stupid laughed his donkey laugh again. "You know what's a _really_ bad idea? Not carrying out General Lonot's orders, which, you know what? Came directly from the sorceress!"

"That's right," Driver agreed. "We can't just go countermanding her orders."

"Not if we don't want the life sucked out of us."

A chill caressed his spine at those words and he felt vaguely ill. Angry, too, although he didn't understand why.

"Look," NotStupid was saying, "we know for a fact that the resistance still hasn't been squashed. I've personally caught a couple of rebels right in Central City. That just doesn't seem like the place to drop a guy who might be capable of giving them technical information they could use against us."

"But like he said," Driver countered, "the sorceress has ordered it. You heard Lonot – she wants everyone to see the Queen's most valued adviser and the kingdom's most brilliant mind reduced to what he is now. It'll_ demoralize_ potential resisters."

"Or maybe it'll inspire them. Especially if there's enough of him left to give them ideas."

"He'll be under constant supervision. He won't get the chance to inspire anyone."

"It's a mistake to think we can control everything."

Stupid snorted. "Don't you think the sorceress knows what she's doing?"

"I think maybe she hasn't heard this guy talk about how science could trump magic. If she had, maybe she'd have decided it wasn't worth the risk."

"So what are you saying? We should just execute the guy? Without any orders?"

"Wouldn't have to be like that. He could've just taken off while we made this stop to stretch our legs. We sent him to the bushes to take a leak and he ran off. We chased him, he fell and broke his neck. Or got shot."

He suddenly found it hard to take air into his lungs, hearing his star pupil speak so calmly, so _conversationally_, about how to murder him. For a moment, terror warred with indignation as the sheer ingratitude of the man offended his sense of right and wrong. But no! There was no time for that! It would probably be a good idea to run, now, before they realized he was listening. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he couldn't seem to move, which is how he came to hear Driver's response.

"That would be dangerous. Suppose Azkadellia got suspicious? I hear the alchemist is working on a way to use viewers to see people's memories."

"See people's memories?" Stupid asked. "How would that work?"

"How should I know? My point is, what if our story doesn't sound quite right? She might decide to try that on us and find out what really happened!"

"Why would our story sound suspicious? Prisoners try to escape from time to time."

"Who knows?" Stupid said. "The point is, it could happen, and when she found out what we did – against her specific orders – we'd be in big trouble."

"You have to assume she understands any risks," Driver added. "I mean, she's had him in custody for months. The alchemist would know just exactly how much he has left in his head, and after all – she's let him live this long."

"Which never made sense to me," Stupid grumbled, as though he should have been consulted about it. "Why didn't they just get rid of him after the extraction?"

"The alchemist wanted to keep him around," Driver – apparently a fertile source of alchemist gossip – answered, "in case they didn't get all the information they needed with the first extraction. And now, the sorceress thinks he can be useful as a symbol."

"Look," NotStupid interjected, "I understand that parading him around demonstrates her power to degrade even the most powerful, but I still think –"

"No." Driver sounded resolute. "I'm not going against the sorceress's express wishes just because you had a conversation with him that bothers you. If Azkadellia doesn't think he's a threat, that's good enough for me."

"Me, too," Stupid echoed emphatically.

He held his breath, tensely awaiting NotStupid's response, which took a while.

"Okay," NotStupid finally agreed. "I just hope we're not making a mistake."

The tension broke, and he sighed as silently as possible.

"It's never a mistake to do what Azkadellia says," Stupid said wisely. "I better go see what the idiot's up to."

Panic flooded his mind. They couldn't find him eavesdropping on their conversation! That might confirm NotStupid's belief that he was some kind of a threat. Arms flailing wildly, he spun around and dashed away as quietly as possible until he was a short distance from the truck. He slowed down and proceeded to stroll aimlessly, staring at some listless wildflowers along the side of the road. He had just bent to pick some when Stupid called to him.

"Hey! Headcase! Break's over. Get back in the truck."

"Already?" He was amazed to hear the faint whine of disappointment in his own voice instead of the quavering fear that he was feeling.

"Get over here!" Stupid barked, and he jumped and hurried toward the truck.

"Sor-_ry_," he muttered insolently as he stepped around the man with the gun and climbed aboard. Really, he was quite astounded at his ability to mask his terror. Maybe he'd been an actor before they'd taken his brain? Although why they'd want the brain of an actor was puzzling.

He straightened and was starting to move further into the truck when his foot caught on something and he felt flat on his face. Stupid made with the donkey laugh again, and he realized that the dung-headed man had tripped him. "Watch your step," he cackled, hauling himself into the truck.

A hand was extended to him from above, and he looked up in surprise to see that NotStupid was already on board. Taking the offered hand with some trepidation, he tried not to give any indication that he'd just heard this same guy suggesting they murder him in cold blood and pass it off as an escape attempt.

"Thanks," he said, and all he could hear in his voice was simple gratitude rather than _youwantedtokillme! _

Oh yes, he'd definitely been a professional actor previously. No doubt about it.

As they all settled down for the rest of the trip, Stupid grabbed his arm and told him, "Just one thing – no more talk about science. Got it?"

_How silly,_ he thought. _What interest could an actor have in talking about science? _He started to sit upon a crate, then for some reason decided he'd be more comfortable on the floor. He caught NotStupid looking at him appraisingly and offered what he hoped was a cheerful, non-threatening smile.

"In fact," said Stupid, sitting down as the truck began to move, "I think maybe you should just keep quiet till we get to Central City."

Excitement distracted him and his face lit up. "We're going to Central City?"

Stupid pinched the bridge of his nose as though developing a severe headache. NotStupid merely kept watching him thoughtfully.

0o0o0

He must have dozed off at some point, lulled by the rocking of the truck as it made its way over the road, because he found himself waking up as it slowed to a stop. "We there?" he yawned.

"Yep, thank the gods," Stupid said blearily. He seemed to be trying to wake up, himself, rubbing his eyes and face with one hand and stretching.

NotStupid seemed quite wide awake.

He was consumed with the desire to see Central City. _(Hey, I remembered!)_ He could remember having spent time there, but had no specific memories of what it looked like. If he were honest with himself, he'd been harboring a hope that seeing it again would jog something, stimulate some memories of his previous life. He seemed able to remember certain things at certain times, but holding on to them was like trying to grasp a live fish. Maybe if he found himself in a familiar place, those earlier visits would come back to him – and bring with them additional recollections.

He stood up while the truck was stopped and contorted himself in an effort to see through the back window of the cab and on through the windshield. He couldn't see much but a huge brick wall and a line of longcoats aiming rifles at the truck before Stupid put a hand to his chest and casually pushed him aside. "Sit tight, halfwit," he said, almost affectionately. "Won't be long now."

NotStupid knocked on the back window of the cab. "What's the hold-up?" he shouted.

Driver yelled back, "They want to inspect the cargo."

Just then, two longcoats appeared at the open back of the truck, rifles at the ready but not aimed… yet.

"What's this?" demanded Stupid, affronted.

"Sorry," said one of the men. "There was a truck stolen yesterday, and we have to inspect all incoming vehicles. There've been rumors of rebel activity. You understand."

"Sure," NotStupid assured them, silencing Stupid's protest with a light slap to the shoulder with the back of his hand. "You want us in or out?"

"Out, please."

"You first, Zip," NotStupid said, taking him by the arm. He felt a flutter in his stomach as he moved to exit the truck; the men standing there made him very nervous, looking at him as though they had no idea what to expect. He was careful to keep his hands extended so they could see he was unarmed until he got to the edge, at which point one of the longcoats on the ground grabbed his arm and helped him jump down, a little roughly.

He stumbled a step or two, straightened, and found he was looking down the way from which they had come, a brick road that curved into the woods. It seemed familiar, but before he had a chance to remember anything about it, he was shocked by the feeling of hands running up and down his person, patting him down. He gasped and went rigid.

"Just checking for weapons. No need to get excited." There were snorts and chuckles of snide amusement, and he felt his face reddening with embarrassment. Turning around, he watched these new longcoats talk briefly with the two he'd been traveling with, then climb inside the truck to check the crates.

He moved toward Stupid, who was huffing and posturing in righteous irritation. "Where are we?"

"Central City, and by the suns, I hope that's the last time I'll have to answer _that_ question today."

"Central City," he breathed. He looked up, took a few steps to the side to see past the truck, and stared at the walls, the gate, and the portion of the skyline visible to him.

He wore a look of happy anticipation until what he was looking at truly sank in.

When he tried to picture what he'd been expecting, he couldn't. All he knew was that the name "Central City" had conjured up feelings of optimism and excitement; he didn't remember what it looked like or what he'd done when he was there, but he knew that his memories were good and his expectations positive.

What he was seeing now didn't fit at all. Before him stood a walled fortress of a place; a dull, bleak city sealed by dull, bleak brick, with men in long coats carrying long guns lining the approach to the arched entrance. Along the top of the wall stood more armed men, ready to fire upon any perceived threat to security.

"This isn't right," he whispered.

"How so?" a voice asked quietly at his elbow.

"It's just…" He was struggling to verbalize the wrongness when he realized it was NotStupid standing beside him, listening carefully. His mouth went suddenly dry. "It… it's just that I… expected it to be..."_Bigger? Smaller? _"Louder." _Huh?_

NotStupid just kept looking at him calmly, appraisingly, and he had to look away before the urge to confess something overwhelmed him.

"C'mon," Stupid was bellowing. "Back in the truck. They've decided we're not gonna try to take over the city. We're going in."

He knew he should just turn and casually go back to the truck, but instead he felt compelled to look at NotStupid, as though seeking permission. The longcoat simply extended his hand toward the truck and said, "You heard the man, Zip. Back on board."

Once they were back in the truck, Driver was waved on and they rolled through the large archway and entered the city proper. Unable to see much looking forward through to the windshield, he slid toward the back of the truck to watch the parts of the city as they passed. Again he felt a pang of disappointment as expectations driven by unremembered experiences went unmet.

He had anticipated a thriving, bustling city full of prosperous and busy people. Instead, he saw numerous shops and businesses boarded up or abandoned with broken windows. Gaunt, impoverished-looking people could be seen huddling in unused doorways or standing on corners. Some of them appeared to be trying to beg from the few pedestrians who appeared well-off; those generally seemed fearful of the interaction and hurried past.

Armed longcoats were visible on every block. They seemed to keep the beggars and dispossessed moving; each time he saw a longcoat walking toward the street people, they moved away with as much speed as they could manage. Some of them were limping and many seemed malnourished, so that was often not very fast.

Not all was misery; some of the people on the street seemed happy enough. Those were the ones who were well-dressed, and often they traveled in expensive cars. There were pretty much just three social strata present here: very poor, obviously rich, and longcoats.

"How's it look?" NotStupid asked.

"Huh?"

"The city. You were so excited to see it again."

"Oh." He looked out again as the truck continued to move. The streets looked dirty. The buildings that didn't appear rundown all seemed to cater to the people who were clearly well-off: nightclubs, expensive restaurants, clothing shops. The whole place seemed to radiate a sense of unvarnished inequality, with armed referees ensuring that all stayed on their assigned sides.

While he may not have remembered the city _per se_, the _idea_ of Central City had always felt positive in his head; he'd felt that he had been happy during whatever time he'd spent here.

He couldn't imagine feeling happy in this place.

"It's not… what I was expecting," he said, finally answering NotStupid. "I must have been thinking of some other city."

"Well," Stupid said in a tone that heralded pontification, "what you're seeing right now is what happens when a few people decide to stir up trouble and ruin things for the rest. Couple of months ago, we didn't have to have so many men on the streets, keeping order. But when you got troublemakers who call themselves 'freedom fighters' stealing vehicles and blowing up –" A sharp look from NotStupid brought him up short, which Stupid clearly resented, but he obeyed the silent command. "Well, anyway, things'll get better here once we've rooted out the malcontents, you can bet on that."

But Stupid's words receded as his attention was claimed by a strange sight. In a large open area – courtyard? Was that the word? – a small crowd had gathered around a man who was picking something up from the ground with a tool and placing it into a canvas bag he had strapped around his neck. He glanced up self-consciously, looking where no one was standing, and made a little wave as though someone had told him to do it. The wave didn't seem aimed at the spectators. As he watched, the man disappeared and was replaced by a bunch of people who seemed to be working on some kind of factory line! Right there in the middle of the courtyard!

Alarmed, he leaned forward, then dropped onto his hands and knees and crawled toward the opening to keep the scene in sight as the truck slowly continued its progress. No one in the surrounding crowd seemed at all surprised by what had happened. But as he continued to watch, he saw a ragged-looking young man dash across the courtyard, waving his arms, and run right through the factory workers… who promptly disintegrated! The crowd didn't seem too surprised about this either, and hastily dispersed as two longcoats swooped down on the young man like leather-clad birds of prey and pulled him out of the courtyard.

At which point the factory workers reappeared.

"Watch it, headcase!" Stupid was saying. "You fall out of the truck, you'll make an awful mess when another car runs over you."

"What's up, Zip? Something bothering you?"

He had turned toward his traveling companions, mouth working but not forming words, but finally found his voice. "That! Over there! What's going on? People are… disappearing and… appearing… and then some guy just… What _is_ that? What are those people watching?"

Stupid was looking at him like he must be having some sort of mental glitch, but NotStupid leaned over to see what he'd been looking at. "Oh, that's just a news projection."

"A what?"

"It's a projected image."

Something stirred in his depleted brain. "TDESHPTL," he whispered, wondering what it meant.

"What?"

"What's it for? Projecting the images, I mean."

"To spread the news. It gives people information about things that are happening around the O. Z."

"Oh." He thought about it. "Well… that's kinda… cool." And it was.

But it would have seemed cooler if the crowd hadn't looked so demoralized as they watched.

A few minutes later, the buildings had become less commercial-looking and he realized that they had entered a residential district. There were fewer people on the street, and none of them were beggars.

A lot of them were longcoats.

The truck pulled over to the curb and stopped. "Out, Zip," NotStupid said. "This is our stop."

"Yep," Stupid echoed, shuffling toward the back and hopping stiffly onto the bricks of the street. He put a hand to his back and stretched. "Thank the gods."

He followed – hopping out with a little more grace than Stupid – and looked all around the street. Stupid pointed to the building they were parked in front of (he thought maybe the name for it was "townhouse," but he wasn't sure) and said, "Welcome home, zipperhead."

Eyes wide, he stared at the building. It was obviously a home, a very large and beautiful one, but it didn't look at all familiar. A graceful stone façade presented a set of wide stone steps that led to an entrance with double doors of heavy, dark wood with brass trimmings. Stately columns flanked the steps, which were sheltered by a tasteful dark blue awning. "I… used to live here?"

Stupid stared in surprise. "You did?"

"No," NotStupid said, "you'll be living here _now_. This is your _new_ home."

He frowned, trying to understand this. He couldn't. While he had no idea just how long he'd been imprisoned, he knew that it had been a considerable amount of time, certainly since before his brain had been taken. A small, dirty cell was literally all he knew as a home, and for that to change, everything he knew about day-to-day living would have to be scrapped and replaced. He didn't know how to handle that.

His breath began to come more rapidly and shallowly, and something of his terror must have shown on his face, because NotStupid patted his shoulder and said, "Don't worry. You'll be told what to do and how to do it. You'll adjust. Everybody does."

Stupid snorted. "You'd think he'd be thrilled to get transferred out of that stinking hole to a place like this."

Shrugging, NotStupid merely said, "There's comfort in the familiar."

One of the doors of the entrance opened and three men hurried out. A large man, tall and flabby with thin, receding dark hair and a huge smile, was the first to approach them. "Hi, Mr. Dunn! Hi, Mr. Barnes! We're here to unload!"

_Who's Dunn and who's Barnes?_ he wondered, looking from one longcoat to the other. It would be funny if Stupid turned out to be Dunn, since he'd always thought that his hair was the color of dung.

"'Bout time, Happy," Stupid rebuked, as though he'd been waiting for half an hour. "Well, don't just stand around – start unloading!"

The man Stupid had called "Happy" laughed and climbed into the truck. Another man followed with less enthusiasm. He was tall too, though not as tall as Happy, and very thin. Sharp, unhappy eyes lived under bushy graying eyebrows, and they cast a strange glance at him (and his zipper) before he climbed into the truck and grabbed a crate.

He looked a lot like the man picking up things and waving in the news projection.

The third man wasn't wearing a coat, but he was definitely a longcoat. There was something about the way he carried himself. That, and his familiar manner with Stupid and NotStupid. "Kinda late tonight."

"We made a long stop along the way," NotStupid responded. "Needed to stretch our legs a bit."

"Plus, they held us at the gate," Stupid said, working up some fresh outrage.

Driver had left the cab and came around to the back of the truck. "All trucks were getting stopped. One was stolen yesterday."

The coatless longcoat nodded. He had lifeless brown hair and quick brown eyes – eyes that had now found the new arrival. "This him?"

Stupid nodded. "That's our big star."

"Zip," said NotStupid, "this is Mr. Calder. He runs this place."

He wasn't sure how he was supposed to respond. His instinct was to shake hands during an introduction, but he was pretty sure that wasn't appropriate here, so he just looked at Mr. Calder and nodded deferentially. He wanted to ask what "this place" actually was and why he was here, but he couldn't figure out whether _that_ would be considered appropriate, either. So he wound up just standing there, staring at the man and nodding.

Calder frowned. "Can't he talk?"

Stupid spun around from supervising the unloading. "Oh, are you _kidding_ me?"

NotStupid smirked at him and turned back to Calder. "Let's take him inside."

The interior of the house was not what he'd expected. While the façade had spoken of refined taste and wealth, the inside of the house was fairly utilitarian. Or rather, had been _made_ utilitarian. Marble floors and intricately carved woodwork in the foyer spoke of a past spent as an elegant home, but a line of simple iron coat hooks on a plain board screwed into the wall suggested something more like a dormitory.

"This is a halfway house, Zip," NotStupid was saying.

"Halfway house? Halfway to what?"

NotStupid cocked his head and shrugged with one shoulder. "Good question. A lot depends on you, really. Anyway, this is where you're going to live during your re-education."

"Oh." Naturally, this made no sense to him, but he really wasn't sure where to start with his questions. Guiltily, he wondered if all of this had been explained to him already and he'd simply not paid attention.

"You see, Zip," Calder said, "tomorrow you'll begin to learn a new skill, something to make you productive. Once you've completed your training, you'll be allowed to rejoin society."

He thought about this. "You're going to teach me a job?"

"That's right."

"And after I learn the new job… what?"

Calder looked at NotStupid, got a short nod, and then answered. "Well, you'll have a useful skill then, won't you? So you'll be able to perform a service and earn your own way."

He thought about this, running all the information through his mind several times to ensure that he understood. "You mean… I'll be free?"

Calder frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but NotStupid got there first. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, okay, Zip?" He clapped him on the shoulder, startling him, and said, "How about we show you where you're gonna sleep?"

On the way up the stairs, he suddenly thought to ask NotStupid, "Hey, which are you – Mr. Dunn or Mr. Barnes?"

"Barnes. Dunn's the guy with the brown hair." Seeing him smile, NotStupid raised an eyebrow. "Something funny?"

He shook his head and mastered the urge to laugh, but then had another thought. "What about the other guy? What's his name?"

"Who?"

"The guy who drove the truck."

"Oh. His name's Rider."

He couldn't help himself. He laughed until they got to the top of the stairs.


End file.
